Do you ever get that feeling when you just want to disappear from the face of the planet, never to be seen ever again?

Well, that’s how I feel right at this very moment.

I can remember several other occasions in my life when I wanted to die. There was that one time in my second year of high school, when I walked around the school campus the whole day with a huge- blood stain on my uniform (and it didn’t help that at all that the skirt of my high school uniform was white).

There was that one time when my cheesy confession letter to, Seoul Academy’s heartthrob, Kim Minseok, got published in the school newspaper as a prank. You could say I was pretty lucky, considering that everything happened towards the end of senior year and graduation. I haven’t seen anyone from high school or Minseok for that matter since we graduated; saving me from total humiliation if I ever bumped into someone I knew and tried to bring up the incident.

However, nothing could possibly top the events that occurred earlier today. My father just got remarried to a woman who looked old enough to be his own daughter and decided to update (or like rewrite) the rights to the company and change his appointed heir to his multimillion corporation without telling me. Effective as of now, it states that ninety per cent of everything including rights to the company, his estate and his inheritance will go to my newly appointed stepmother. Yipee! But wait, it gets even better! The remaining ten per cent will get split between me and their stupid dog! Life is so cruel when you get degraded to the level of a family mutt.

There’s more, surprisingly, I discovered that my lovely boyfriend or should I say ex-boyfriend dumped me for my best-, I mean my ex-best friend. I suspected something odd about Chen but I was shocked when I caught them on a dinner date at my favourite restaurant! The two of them can go die and rot in the fiery depths of hell for all I care.

All these years, I wasted my time and efforts aiming to be the best at everything and anything so that maybe, one day, my father would notice me but all I return is a measly five per cent of nothing. I give up.

As I took off my slippers, I climbed up onto the ledge stood on top of the concrete slab, I felt the cold wind blow right past my face almost as if it was a icy slap to the face. My hair flew in all sorts of directions – I could guarantee that if anyone saw me right now, they’d probably think I was some weird witch lady doing black magic on the rooftop. However, no one ever bothered to come up here.

A cold chill ran down my spine as I looked down. I wasn’t going to lie – it was a very long way down from the rooftop considering I did live in high rise apartment block with more than hundred floors.

The sun was setting and the view was amazing from here. It was a shame that I’ll never see this view again. Maybe they had similar views in heaven but I doubt that was where I was heading. Nevertheless, anywhere would be better than this place. I breathed slowly, in and out, an attempt to control my emotions. Soon, I had tears creeping their way out of my eyes.

In my head, I began to count. I was going to count til ten and do the deed. I stopped counting when I got to five, not because I chickened out but because I noticed an odd flying object in the sky. I couldn’t properly tell what it was since it was getting dark and it was so far away. Still indistinguishable, I guessed it was just a bird and continued from where I stopped counting.

The flying object flew closer towards the rooftop and soon enough, the creature came into better view. It was strange as the object looked like some sort of giant, disfigured chicken.  At this point, I was definitely hallucinating because if my memory served me correct, chickens couldn’t possibly fly several metres high in the sky. For awhile, I just stood there observing the bird struggled to fly as the strong breeze kept blowing it in the opposite direction it wanted to go. At one point, it almost looked like the mutated chicken was trying to fly towards me.

“Ahhhhh!!!” The bird let out a loud cry. 

“Minyoung!” I scrunched my face up in complete confusion. The enormous bird just called my name. I must have been going crazy. My mind kept telling me to jump already but as I was about to take a step forward off the ledge, I was startled by the strange creature.

“Don’t jump!” My eyes widened in shock. Did the chicken just tell me not to jump?!

Before I knew it, the bird flew right into me, effectively pushing me off the ledge and both of us came crashing down onto the cold cement floor. My body ached from the collision but to be honest, my brain hurts even more as I tried to make sense of the current situation.

I sat up and clutched at my head in pain. I turned to get a closer look at the bird. Boy was I wrong – that flying thing was no giant, mutated chicken. It had giant white wings protruding from its back and a head of blonde hair. Chickens do not have full head of hair just as humans do. As my vision began to return to its normal state, I realised that it was a man lying next to me.

I scrambled to get onto my feet as I opened my mouth of scream but I was so freaked out, no sound, nothing came out of my mouth. I probably looked like an idiot with my jaw dropped as I pointed at the unclothed man. The stranger stirred and shook his hair out of his eyes. He looked up at me with freakishly large eyes and a smile tugged at the corners of his small mouth.

“Minyoung, are you okay?”

I screamed this time and I made sure the whole city of Seoul heard me before I out.