The sun glowed on Nana’s hair so brightly at the front of the class and I imagined it felt almost hot to the touch. Like every strand of it was made from sunshine. And when it rained, her eyes were bright like a golden sap. Her bottom lip was rosy and plump after she’d bit on it all day, brows furrowed as she stared at her textbooks. When she laughed, she sounded like the birds that woke me up every morning right outside my bedroom window.

“You’re staring more than usual,” Baekho grinned, glancing between Nana and I. “Have you talked to her yet?”

I turned my eyes away from her. “Not yet, no. I don’t even know what I would say. That’s so awkward, isn’t it? Seriously, don’t talk to her for me, I really don’t want you to.”

“You like her. That’s what friends do is play matchmaker, right?”

“Baekho, please.”

“Can you help me with this, the teacher mumbled the whole lecture and I’m damn near lost,” he pointed his pencil at one of the math problems in the book, suddenly very serious.

I sighed. “Sure, what part are you having a hard time with?”

The moon was poking out of the sky sooner and sooner each night, a sure sign that winter was creeping up. Baekho and I had climbed up to the top of the water tower, shivering as the wind blew right through us. My bones and my muscles were still sore from the training hours before, and despite the chilling wind, I could’ve fallen asleep sitting upright at the top of that tower. Just as my eyelids were too heavy to keep open, Baekho stood.

“You ready to go home?”

“I’m gonna do it.”

“No you’re not!” It was more like a question.

He smirked. “I’m ready now. I can do it. I was so close earlier.”

I stood beside him, pulling my coat around myself even tighter. The wind seemed to grow stronger, my eyes blinking out the tears with each gust. “You’ll die if you don’t catch yourself.”

“I’ll die walking down the street, Min. I’m going, right now.” Baekho looked down at the village far below the height of the water tower, the lights blinking on and off from the houses planted in the suburbs. He breathed in deep, chest heaving and shoulders hunching up to his ears. He exhaled, grinning down at the specs of light far below before he ran off the edge of the water tower.

My arms reached out to catch him even without my meaning to. His arms and legs reached out in all directions as he plummeted towards the gravel far below and I felt like I’d been suffocating as I waited for everything to fail. I only blinked once and he was gone from my sight, lost somewhere between the dark corners of the earth where the moonlight couldn’t reach. I peeked further and further over the edge, praying to find him in one piece somewhere at the ground. My gut fell before I did and suddenly I was reminded of all the dreams I’d had of falling before. This time I wouldn’t jolt upright in my bed.

Tears built up and blurred my vision, the wind had become so much fiercer. The details are fuzzy, everything went blank. As though I’d become this empty skin, like I were viewing my own fate through third person. A strange experience. Before I met with the gravel beneath me, my wrists were yanked toward the sky and my legs flung like the limbs of a ragdoll. I saw Baekho’s signature grin, saw the water tower in the near distance, but my voice was still somewhere deep within my stomach.

“I always wanted to be a superhero,” he said, wrapping one arm around my torso and holding me close to him. “Thing is, you’re real heavy, though. A sack of dead weight, can’t you help or something?”

The tears were still building up in the corners of my eyes, heart beating viciously against my chest. “Sorry, I’m sort of in shock.” I struggled to catch my breath as he took us back to the earth. “I think I almost died.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t that dramatic, kid,” he laughed from deep within his chest.

“You don’t think so?” My voice was weak, still distant.

I stumbled into the picnic table nearby, fingers trembling. The cracks in the wood were wriggling around and the rotation of the Earth left me with vertigo. There were trillions and millions of words in my head and yet each of them left was like a giant, pounding silence.

“I just flew! Ya hear me? I just goddamn flew!” Baekho shouted somewhere behind me, though we may as well have been in separate rooms by now. “Min, we might as well be in’ angels!”

“There are two nuances to that sentence,” I replied, voice monotone and breathy.

I felt Baekho’s hand on my shoulder, like a heavy weight. “You doin’ alright?” he laughed, shaking my body before taking a seat. “Come back to me, man! I caught you, you’re fine.”

“Just give me a minute to catch my breath.”

The cold had caught up with me yet again, and now the trembling in my fingers was shivering. “Let’s head back, I’m freezing.” We found the path lit by streetlights, my mind still stuck in the freefall.

“You could do it, too, Min. I know you can,” Baekho said, stretching his arms out far ahead of him and smiling like his clips were pinned into his cheeks. “I swear, it was like I remembered what it felt like when I took my first steps, like some crazy kind of memory time machine… thing.”

“Yeah? It’ll probably become like second nature to you then.”

“I hope so. Honestly, I never wanted to come back down to earth.”

“Sorry to drag you down then.”

“Oh, shut up, Min, don’t get so upset about it.” He shoved me aside, jumping up onto invisible platforms and climbing on the streetlights as we passed them. I could barely hold my eyes open.

When I was home, I walked through the house in the dark and fell into my bed. My skin suddenly seemed so thin and worn, my head hollow and I was suddenly aware that I had no bones to protect the organs below my ribcage. The darkness in the room had woken my mind and I thought I could finally decipher the universe with the shadows in every corner of my bedroom. There was something in me, like a seed, that had planted this new flesh beneath my old and worn skin, and I had to wriggle out of it and be born again. Into something new, something wiser.

I felt incredibly sitting in the back of the classroom, Nana glancing back at me from the front of the room often that day. There was a timid spark in her eyes whenever she caught me staring, a shudder in her spine as she jolted forward. Baekho nudged my side, grinning without a word. I wondered if I had telepathy, wondered if I could make him hear my thoughts. Even so, he would’ve grinned back at me as usual. Would’ve laughed it off and shook his head. “It’s what friends do,” he would say.

The bell rang like a jolt through my chest. Nana stayed at her desk, shoving her things into her backpack more slowly than usual.

“We’re headed to the Chinese place, you comin’?” JR asked.

She shook her head. “No, I have some other things I have to do. Maybe we can catch up later.”

JR nodded, leaving the room with Aron and Lizzy.

Baekho stood, patting my shoulder as he made his body around our desks. “I’m actually gonna head out now, too. Don’t wait up, Min.” I was sure he winked at me.

Everyone else had already gone, leaving Nana and myself alone in the room. Every object seemed to have a consciousness of its own and the feeling I had was unbearable. It was clearly all Baekho’s doing, the entire situation. I could only imagine in what ways he had to threaten her to get her to wait for me.

I made my way to the front of the room, heart like a madman throwing his body against the walls. There weren’t words in my head for me to use, no context, no clues. Baekho left me with nothing but cryptic laughter, a wink, and a nudge. I’d been abandoned in quicksand.

“He said you had something to say to me,” Nana finally said, standing beside her desk. “Baekho did,” she added.

I bit hard on my bottom lip, the disgusting taste of blood flowing in my mouth. “Did he tell you what exactly I wanted to tell you? Did he say,” I paused, “did he prepare you?”

She readjusted the strap of her backpack over her shoulder, only sharing eye contact with me for a few moments at a time. “Well… kind of. He said it was about some things… we both remember differently.”

“Oh.” I took a deep breath, reminded myself that the old flesh was gone. That I was someone new, someone who was about to make a second life for myself. Maybe it wasn’t a life I deserved yet, but it was one I wanted to try and earn. “Can we go up to the roof?”

“Sure.”

We walked in silence up the stairs, made our way to the rooftop of the school. The sun was already barely hanging over the horizon, the sky painted orange. I wasn’t sure what to clear up first, I felt there must have been a million things that needed clarifying. Nana never asked for this in the first place, she had to of felt so burdened. Maybe even exhausted.

I made my way closer to the edge of the roof, hands in my pockets. “I know what happened to you last year.” It sounded so insensitive, the way I had just said it. I probably sounded threatening.

“You do?”

“I saw the whole thing.”

I laughed under my breath, the wind beginning to pick up. “I never intended to say anything but,” I breathed in deep, “the ceiling caving in wasn’t by coincidence, Nana.”

“What do you mean?” She dropped her back down by her feet, head tilted.

“You remember when I pushed that kid off the top of the jungle gym?”

She nodded. “Of course I do.”

“How do you remember it?”

“It was so long ago, Minhyun, the memory is kinda vague now. I just remember you pushed him over after he’d said some nasty things.”

So Baekho was right.

I paused, looking for the words the continued to slip from my fingers. “There’s something very off about me, isn’t there? Everyone avoids me and I thought I knew why but now.”

“You never answered me about before. Why did the ceiling fall down? Did you do it? How?”

Counting. It was the only way I knew for sure that I could just do it. Get it over with. Admit the truth to someone for once. “I have superpowers.”

She gave a weak grin. “Quit playing. Honestly, how did you do it? I always imagined I had a guardian angel. Didn’t realize he was you.”

“I told you,” I laughed, turning my heels towards the edge of the roof. “I can prove it, too.”

She stepped forward, chest heaving, mouth agape. “What are you doing?”

I smiled, spreading my arms out. And then, I fell backwards, let her watch me let go of everything. Let her watch the wind catch me. Weightless.