Still Falling STILL FALLING P1
Weight left him first.
No wind slapped his face. No ground rushed up to meet him. No horizon gave him a direction—only the drop itself, stomach gone, body hanging in a weightlessness that had nothing to do with flight. He did not know what year it was. He did not know if he was awake. He only knew he was still falling, and the fall had no end.
Once—before anything else—something spoke into the drop. Male. Controlled. Clean at the edges in a way that did not belong here. No body behind it. Val did not understand the words. They passed through him and were gone, and the void offered nothing to hold on to.
He tried to scream. His mouth opened and the void swallowed the sound whole—no echo, no impact, no proof anything had heard. He twisted for a handhold that was not there, for up or down, for any axis at all, and found nothing. Fear spiked hard enough to bleach his thoughts white. Then the fall loosened its grip on his mind and he slid under, pulled into something that was not the void anymore.
Laughter hit before the playground did.
A shoulder shoved his—easy roughness, someone who had known him since they were small. A grin hung one step behind, like the three of them had always been a knot that could not come undone. Someone was too loud on purpose again. Val had trusted that warmth once. In the nightmare it still hurt, and he could not tell if the hurt meant it had been real or only that the void knew where to cut.
Different schools. The screen went quiet on his side first—messages thinning, then stopping, lunches that used to overlap dying one notification at a time. Semesters turned. Holidays turned. Faces he had assumed would still answer if he reached out did not.
Then a transfer his parents wanted and he did not. A hallway hug hard enough to turn heads.
"You're here!"
An irritated guide with a slumped agreement. "Fine. Yeah." For a breath the warmth was genuine—old friend, new duty, the small hope that a better school might fix something.
Then the loud table swallowed him.
Boys talking over each other. Girls watching with amused cruelty. Someone friendly enough that he thought he had finally been chosen. He sat where the noise was thickest and told himself that was what having people looked like.
A wave from shared class. Saved seats once, then twice, then nothing when he never came back. He kept choosing the loud table instead. Barely spoke except when a teacher forced them into the same project. He was the one who walked away. The memory did not soften that.
An outing echo still burned—the table cooling when he arrived anyway, his presence spoiling whatever fun they had planned. Most days he ate alone in the library instead, headphones in, book open, pretending not to care. He only sat with them once or twice a week when it was convenient for them, never when he needed it.
A face from primary school surfaced again—almost familiar, almost warm. Different schools after grade eight; she had his number and never used it. Later they were close again at the same high school, laughter at his table, easy enough to believe in. Then a boy from the loud table beside her at lunch, hands linked, gossip in the air—and she stopped talking to him when the relationship took her evenings. He could not tell if those wounds had happened in order or if the void had stitched them together just to hurt him.
Graduation was handshakes and photos and nobody staying. A shoulder clap, a promise—"I'll hit you up sometime." Hollow pings that never became plans. Phones stayed quiet. Everyone walked off as if the years had meant nothing.
When the noise finally cleared, the ache stayed but the truth would not hold still. The belonging he had chased was never really there when it counted—the loud table had been noise dressed up as friendship, and that much still felt solid. Warm fragments and cold ones carried the same weight now. Playground shove, hallway hug, screen going dead, library alone: he could not tell memory from hunger anymore. He remembered walking away. He remembered choosing wrong. He no longer knew what to believe.