He stood on the edge of the rooftop, peering out over the sprawling city laid bare before him. From the fifty-seventh floor where he was standing, everything seemed miniature: the cars and buses that looked like his son’s play toys, zipping up and down elongated highways weaving through the metropolis; the individual human beings that bustled about like a colony of ants, each an insignificant speck of dust in a city of eight million.

He often thought about what would happen if he just happened to unfortunately trip and fall off the edge, tumbling at the acceleration of 9.81 metres per second squared until he was just a pile of unrecognisable human bolognese on the pavement. What a way to go — a quick and hopefully painless end to the suffocating life he’d somehow signed up for.

He took a drag from the cigarette between his fingers, its cool menthol taste lingering in his mouth before he released it as a puff of smoke into the icy cold air. He knew he’d pay for it later, not in the form of his health — he worked out every day and was in the best shape of his life — but when his wife would smell it off his breath and start another extended conversation-slash-argument that after a 12-hour day at work, was the last thing that he needed.

As his cigarette burnt out, he gave a big sigh; exasperated that his release from all the stress of life was so fleeting and momentary.

“How the fuck did I get here?” he thought to himself.

It’d started back in college, when he’d gone overseas to do a degree in Finance. Three years in London, where he’d been ever so homesick that he’d clung on firmly to all the other Asians who’d gone over for their tertiary education as well. In the blink of an eye, he had his first girlfriend as well — a classmate from the same city who always reminded him of home, even over all the weekends that they’d spend backpacking through Spain, Greece, Germany and all over Europe. And he’d mistaken that taste of familiarity for the stability of love.

Graduation had been a whirlwind and after moving back to Hong Kong and getting his first job, it had just been a matter of time before he proposed. She’d said yes and everything seemed right in the world, even though somehow her health had prevented her from getting a full-time job in the two years after getting back. That was no biggie, he thought — he made enough for the both of them to comfortably get by, and the only thing that was important was that they were together. Not much longer after that, there’d been happy news that neither of them had been expecting or prepared for: a baby boy on the way, sending both of their lives down a spiral of chaos.

Now, he realised that nothing bad in life ever just shows up suddenly, or else you’d never let it in; it always slowly creeps up on you, seeping into the cracks and before you realise it, it’s already too late to get rid of it.

And so now, at the young age of 25, he was saddled with every Asian parent’s wet dream of a wife and a kid; while all his peers were out drinking, partying, exploring the many exciting offerings that adulthood offered. And he knew that he wasn’t happy anymore, when his then-girlfriend, now-wife’s musings about local food had turned from endearing pinings to annoying complaints, when more and more unexpected avenues of expenditure showed up, all falling on his shoulders.

Because sometimes life is like a highway, and the longer you go, the further apart the exits are. So you ignore the early ones, trying to make it work; and you ignore the ones that show up later, thinking that you have so much shared baggage anyways that it doesn’t make sense to let that go. Until one day that shared baggage takes human form as a bawling baby that’s half your DNA and you realise — fuck, maybe it’s too late to back out now, even if you want to.

And peering over the rooftop ledge, he realised that maybe, just maybe, the only way out is to crash the car.