The rooftop didn't belong to anyone. No landlord, no key. Just a rusted metal door that stuck when it rained, and a ladder that required a kind of insistence to climb, as though you had to convince yourself that the world above was worth the effort. For Susana, Jordan, Margret, and Mirabel, it was sacred. A place where time slowed and the hum of the city beneath their feet could not intrude.
Susana sat cross-legged in her usual corner, her notebook spread open, pages curling at the edges from the summer heat. Her pen moved like it had a life of its own, scribbling words that sometimes made sense, sometimes made the air tremble. She was always writing — on napkins, on bus tickets, the backs of receipts, or on her palm when paper was not near. Stories, she said, lived in the air; if you didn't catch them, they'd move on to someone else.
Jordan arrived next, as usual, his camera bouncing against his chest. The backpack he carried was half-zipped, cables spilling from the sides, tangled like wild vines. He didn't greet them so much as announce himself with motion, pacing around the rooftop as though it were a set he had built and not just borrowed from a disinterested world. He adjusted nothing, but every movement carried the illusion of preparation — hair shoved behind his ear, lens cap twiddled, focus checked and double-checked.
Margret appeared last, her entrance loud and unapologetic. Half her hair was dyed, half left wild, both halves screaming attention. She dropped her bag with a thud, sending a cloud of dust into the late afternoon air. "You know," she said, voice sliding across the rooftop like a melody, "the sun's trying, but it's failing. We could do better." She kissed Jordan on the cheek, Susana, then sat with an exaggerated sigh, stretching her legs into the sun. Margret always seemed to arrive already in motion, already in character, as though the world itself were a stage and she had memorised the first line.
Mirabel came last, quiet, almost imperceptible. She slid onto the roof without sound, barefoot as always, her sketchbook open on her knees. Her pencils clattered against the page as she leaned in close, eyes scanning every shadow and flicker of light. She didn't speak unless spoken to, and even then, her words were careful, deliberate. But the quiet was not absence. It was weight, presence folded into the air around them. When she painted, the rooftop seemed to breathe with her.
Four. Always four. Together, yet apart. A strange symmetry existed between them, like the corners of a well-cut gem: each distinct, each necessary to complete the shape. The rooftop had seen them fight and reconcile, cry under the unforgiving sun, nap on borrowed blankets, drink cheap wine, and eat noodles salvaged from questionable takeout. It was their world, and outside it, everything else could pause or disappear.
"You know what we should do?" Jordan said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence. His camera dangled from one hand, the other adjusting the strap of his backpack. "We should make something."
Margret raised an eyebrow. "Like… what? A TikTok?"
"No. A film. A real film," Jordan said, as though the distinction were obvious.
Susana looked up, tilting her head, her pen paused mid-sentence. "About what?"
Jordan didn't even hesitate. "Us."
Margret snorted, rolling her eyes so hard it looked like she might see her thoughts. "Us?"
"Yes," he said, voice steady and low, almost reverent. "All of it. The rooftop. The city. The chaos. The quiet. Everything we feel and don't say. It's… It's alive."
Mirabel didn't speak. She just looked at him from under her lashes, pencil hovering over the page, as if weighing the truth in his words. When she finally spoke, it was soft, almost a whisper. "Then we need colour."
Jordan nodded, snapping the camera up to his eye. "And light. Always light."
Susana's lips curved, a small, knowing smile. She turned back to her notebook and began to write again, faster this time. Her words became scripts, monologues she could test, lines she could whisper into the wind, leaving fragments of them scattered across the city in case someone found them later.
Margret leaned back, her head against the rooftop railing. "I'll act," she said, almost reluctantly. Then louder: "I'll be loud. Dramatic. You'll thank me later."
Mirabel's pencil scratched across the paper, a small smudge forming in the corner of her page. "I'll paint everything you can't see," she said. Her voice was still low, but it carried a certainty that settled like a weight into the rooftop's air.
And so it began.
They didn't have a script, not yet. They didn't have permits, props, or a plan. What they had was instinct, hunger, and a stubborn belief that this — this rooftop, these moments, these people—was worth recording. They began shooting in abandoned train stations, graffiti tunnels, and empty libraries. They filmed under the golden glow of sunset, in the wet shimmer of rain, under streetlights that buzzed like they were on the verge of disappearing.
Scenes were chaotic, improvisational. Jordan followed Susana as she walked through a tunnel, reading a letter to her future self. Margret screamed in a phone booth that recorded nothing but her raw energy. Mirabel painted a figure walking into a burning door, over and over, each time with slightly less colour, capturing the ephemeral nature of memory itself.
Even in their imperfections, there was beauty. Each frame, each line, each stroke of paint felt alive. They weren't trying to go viral. They weren't even trying to be famous. They were trying to make something that would outlive the moment.
When the sun began to dip behind the city, spilling gold across the rooftop, they huddled together to review the footage. Margret wiped a tear she didn't realise had fallen. "This," she whispered, voice trembling, "this is the kind of art that makes you stay alive."
No one spoke, but they all nodded.
Later, lying on thrifted blankets beneath the dimming sky, Susana traced words in her notebook by the soft light of her phone. Margret played with strands of Mirabel's hair while murmuring lines, testing emotion. Jordan experimented with angles, obsessively filming nothing and everything at once. And Mirabel, barefoot, sketched stars along the rooftop's edge, tiny glowing dots like constellations only they could see.
For the first time, the rooftop felt like the centre of the universe. And maybe, in some way, it was.