Rooftop Prints
Footprints led from the pool to the changing rooms, now fading fast in Bangkok’s superheat.
Nok stood over them, cheeks flushed hot, and felt her hands curling into fists. This was supposed to be her place, her sanctuary, forty-one dizzying floors above the carcass of a city slithering in its own filth.
The floods in ‘74 carried with them cholera and chemical runoff, mainly from the factory district. Few dark reaches of the faded megalopolis escaped the rising waters. Swimming was a distant flash in the memory for most, unless you loved burning skin and lesions. There were pools on other high-rises, but most were claimed by gangs or families who’d shoot you for getting close.
Nok’s pool was far enough from the center that no one had found it. She’d spent weeks searching for the needed parts and rigging the system, finally seeing the rainwater collect, and the elation of it. In a city where everything got taken, this was the one thing she’d built from nothing that was hers. Her rules applied here, and no one else knew about it. Except now it appeared someone did.
She went to her water system by the stairwell, looking back occasionally, peripherally aware. The intake pipe was clear, the overflow working, but when she reached the filter, she stiffened. Someone had emptied the cloth filter and reset it. They’d even wrung it out. Dust and debris that had collected over the weeks had been cleared out.
She could slip down the stairs and quietly disappear now. Pretend she hadn’t been there.
No. No chance. This was hers, and she’d earned it. Through pain, she’d earned it.
She placed her bag by the pool’s edge, stripped to her swimsuit, and crouched to dip in a hand. She slid in and launched into a gentle front stroke. Her shoulders were tight, and her legs kicked out of her usual rhythm. She mis-timed a breath and coughed. But she kept swimming, her eyes flicking around, expecting shadows to appear. Her hands slapped the water now. Asserting her dominion, awkwardly.
The changing room door squeaked, but it was the movement that told her she wasn’t alone.
She swam to the far edge, turned, wiped water out of her eyes, and bounced on her toes. She gazed at the jagged, smouldering horizon.
A girl emerged from the room, maybe seventeen, wearing a moth-eaten tracksuit and flip flops. Her black hair was still damp and slicked back. She carried a small pack and stared straight as she crossed the deck.
Nok opened her mouth to shout, but the words stuck. The girl walked with the same careful tension Nok recognised from the street waders below. Another scavenger, another survivor.
Their eyes met for half a second.
The girl’s expression was flat, and there was no apology in it. Just unperturbed recognition. She disappeared down the stairwell.
Nok’s legs buckled slightly as she hurried to where the girl had vanished, peered down the stairwell, and heard the echoes of descending steps. Her bag sat untouched by the pool.
She sat cross-legged on the warm concrete and dropped her feet in the water. Smoke drifted across the skyline. How many others were out there, hauling piping up forty flights because they were too stubborn to share a pool?
For three months, she’d kept this place a secret, telling no one. Not even cousin Kasem. Trusting no one. It had felt like safety, but now it felt like another unnecessary wall.
Maybe tomorrow the girl would return, and she’d learn her name.
The city sprawled silent below, full of people building things alone.
. . .
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