By now, the rooftop had become a stage, a confessional, a sanctuary, and a battlefield all at once. Every morning, they climbed the ladder as though it were a gateway into another world. Each rung groaned under their weight, protesting their insistence to be present, yet they ignored the sound. Once they reached the top, the city stretched below them, vast and indifferent, the streets humming faintly like a distant heartbeat.
Jordan had grown meticulous. The camera never left his hands. He filmed in half-speed, in close-ups, in silhouettes, capturing every tremor of the wind in Susana's hair, every flicker of Margret's eyelashes, every subtle curl of Mirabel's brushstroke. "The world moves too fast," he muttered one afternoon, balancing the camera atop a fire escape as Susana paced. "We have to feel forever. We have to live forever."
Margret's energy had reached new extremes. She flung herself into scenes with abandon, screaming into the wind until her voice cracked, collapsing in heaps of laughter and tears, her chest rising and falling with frantic rhythm. She had memorised every line of Susana's script as if it were a lifeline, as though the words themselves could tether her to the world.
Susana wrote constantly, leaving pages in impossible places. A letter slipped into a bus seat, a monologue scrawled on a library table, a line etched into the foggy window of a taxi. "If someone finds them," she whispered one evening, "maybe they'll remember us… even if we are gone." The thought made her chest ache, but she didn't stop.
Mirabel, as always, painted. She no longer limited herself to walls or sketchbooks. She painted on shoes left by the curb, on discarded crates, on Jordan's jacket while he slept. Tiny stars, constellations only they could see, spread like fireflies across surfaces that should have been ordinary. She hummed her song, low and persistent, and the rooftop responded, vibrating gently under their feet.
The city around them continued to fray. Shops disappeared, streetlights failed, and friends no longer recognised them. Margret received texts from her mother that referenced moments she had no memory of. Susana's audio clips recorded nothing but silence. Jordan's ID failed to scan, and Mirabel's enrollment had vanished from the school system entirely. And yet, they continued to create, their obsession growing like wildfire.
One afternoon, the four of them gathered in a tunnel painted with graffiti so bright it hurt to look at directly. Susana held a sheet of paper with her final monologue. Jordan set up the camera, his fingers trembling slightly as he adjusted the lens. Margret stretched her arms toward the ceiling, testing the space, testing herself. Mirabel laid down a sheet of translucent paper, painting shadows that moved and twisted in impossible directions.
"This is it," Margret said, voice trembling, eyes bright. "This is everything we've been building."
Susana nodded, glancing at each of them in turn. "Every shot, every word, every stroke… It's all a record. Of us. Of now. Of forever, if forever exists."
Jordan gave a small smile. "Then let's make it last."
They began filming the scenes that would form the spine of their final project. Jordan followed Susana through the tunnel as she read her letter, each word resonating with a weight beyond the paper it was written on. Margret screamed in a phone booth, her voice ricocheting, leaving an echo in the empty streets that seemed to linger long after she left. Mirabel painted figures stepping through fire, over and over, each iteration fading slightly, as if time itself were stealing the colour away.
At night, the rooftop became their refuge again. They sprawled on blankets, the wind tugging gently at their hair, the city below pulsing faintly like a living organism. They shared small, secret rituals. Jordan drank his mango soda, Margret screamed into the night to clear her lungs, Susana kissed her pen, and Mirabel hummed, letting the melody fill the space between them.
They talked about dreams — distant, impossible, necessary. Margret wanted to act on a real stage, Susana wanted to make someone cry with her words, Jordan wanted every frame to last forever, and Mirabel… Mirabel wanted to be seen.
But even as they clung to their rituals, reality continued to fray. A friend vanished from social media, a teacher forgot their names, and a familiar shop was gone the next day. Margret received a text from her mother referencing a birthday she could not recall celebrating. Jordan discovered a photograph in his camera that he did not take. Susana's monologues recorded nothing but silence. And still, they persisted.
The obsession had reached a point where the line between their creation and the world around them blurred. They no longer moved through reality; reality moved around them. Every shadow, every flicker of light, every sudden gust of wind seemed orchestrated, as if the city itself were bending to their presence, their need to be remembered.
One evening, as golden light spilt across the rooftop, Jordan set the camera on a tripod facing the skyline. "Ready?" he asked. The four of them stood together, wind tugging at their hair, the city stretching endlessly below. Susana held her final monologue in her hands, Margret's eyes glistened with unshed tears, Mirabel's fingers were smudged with paint, and Jordan adjusted the lens one last time.
"This is it," Susana whispered, stepping forward. "If we disappear tomorrow, don't look for us in the news. Don't look for our faces in frames. Look for what we left behind — the colour, the voice, the echo."
Jordan didn't say "cut." Margret blinked, hesitant, and Mirabel's hand hovered over her brush. And then, in a moment suspended between heartbeats, something shifted. The rooftop seemed to tilt slightly, the wind changed direction, and for a heartbeat, the city below felt less substantial, as though it were made of smoke and memory.
They remained still, watching the sky. The light caught Susana's hair, turning it gold. Margret's red fur coat flared in the wind. Mirabel's stars shimmered faintly in the corner of the rooftop. Jordan's lens captured it all.
And then they began filming the final scene — not a scene of action or dialogue, but a final standing together, a testament to existence. They were silent, alive, immortal in that frozen frame.
The camera recorded, capturing every subtle shift: a blink, a breath, a smile that was almost a secret. It recorded the golden hour that would never come again, the wind that would never feel the same. They were four teenagers on the edge of forever, fully aware that the world outside their rooftop had begun to forget them.
But they did not care.
Because they were creating. Because they were alive. Because the rooftop, and each other, and the film they had built were enough.
And in the quiet glow of that golden hour, the rooftop four became immortal — not in history books, not in news clips, not in records or registers, but in something more enduring: the art they had made, the moments they had stolen from time, and the story they had written into the very fabric of the city, even as it slipped away.