We are here now.

0.99: The Dive.

I get up on my wobbly feet, 

With half a heart to sit back down, wait a little longer.

But I'm afraid he'll leave, with the rise of the sun.

For he still seems like a vivid dream.

A dream too real to be true.

Drawing my hood over my head, I walk towards the bamboo tower, with its ledge hovering over the restless whirlpool.

I feel gazes from multiple eyes piercing my back

Though the place is empty.

But ignoring my illusionary spectators

I move, resolute than ever.

The beaker's roar is intimidating, but not enough to make me halt.

I don't know this feeling, but it makes everything laughable.

Everything that ever happened in my life.

Every time I made home out of excruciating pain and swallowing darkness,

Every time I let myself get soaked in the deceiving sunlight.

Every time I thought I would never be unhappy again,

Every time I believed I was meant to be unhappy.

Every time I thought, this is it.

Every time I realized, there is no 'it'.

It doesn't make sense now.

The only things that count are the sea and us,

And the narrow, yet insurmountable distance in between.

And soon I hear voices, whether my own or of those hundreds of pieces of myself I left behind,

I'll never know, because I won't look back.

At least that's what I tell myself.

It's too late to look back,

So I climb, hands and feet skillfully placing themselves on the rungs of the weak structure,

One after one, rising higher, gravity pulling on me, harder.

The world already seems small, as I stand up to my height.

And so do the voices and stares from below.

With my hood still on, I peek at them from behind it,

Afraid that a direct sight would throw me flying off the tower right back to where I was.

I wash the confusion on their faces away, with a smile.

The kind that's happiest of the saddest,

Burning with the brightness of a lamp that has just been turned off. There, but not quite.

I can feel fire in my eyes as they bore into the infinity of blueness.

Challenging its vastness with all the intensity in my weary gaze.

Instinctively, my eyes divert to look at him, one last time,

Before facing the unknown.

Our hands unite again. No words are exchanged.

And I swear just before I look away, I see the corner of his lips pulled up in an unreadable smirk.

I don't bother to study him anymore, since I'm doing the same.

We're the same. We've always been.

And now we've come to this.

The beats of our synchronized hearts are the countdown to zero.

Three.

Maybe this is the end.

Two.

Or maybe not.

One.

But we are still here. For a moment before it goes down to

Zero.

When we have to dive.      

Here's the longest sprint I ever made.

Here's an endless flight in mid-air.

Before all I see is blue and black.

If I can see at all, because

This time, there's no light.