"If you ever think about chasing death, always remember there are fates worse than death. Learn to enjoy life till you can hold on to it. Don't give up just yet. Life is so much more than just waiting or worse, wishing for death."

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"You're not thinking of jumping from there, are you?" A deep male voice jolted me from the thoughts clogging my mind.

I realised I was sitting on the railing of a bridge. Somehow, my legs were dangling on the other side. I didn't even remember climbing up there. It was a precarious position that no person in their right mind would be in, and yet I was on the bridge. I dared to take a peek down. The pitch-black ground melted somewhere into the inky night at the horizon. City lights twinkled in the distance.

"What if I were?" I asked absent-mindedly, without even looking at the guy speaking.

"Then, it's my moral duty to pull you back." The voice gave a low amused chuckle.

"What if I tell you to leave me alone?" I asked slowly.

"Are you waiting for somebody special to come to save you?" the deep voice asked. "In that case, I can stay here till he comes to find you."

I turned around. The guy, in his late twenties, had his hands thrust into the pocket of his loose black hoodie. His facial features were quite ordinary — light stubble and black hair falling untidily over his forehead. What caught my attention were his eyes. They were like two glittering pools of onyx, and a certain black fire seemed to burn steadily behind his irises. They were intimidating, if not scary.

"I'm waiting for death," I said finally. "Are you satisfied? Now please leave me alone."

"Death is not a choice. It is a compulsion." His tone was casual but there was a certain weight in each word that he spoke.

"You speak as if you've cracked all the secrets of life and death." I rolled my eyes.

"Let's just say I've been to the other side and back." He chuckled slowly.

And that was it.

I lifted my legs, swinging them to the safer side as I jumped down from the railings, right in front of him.

"So, let me help you get this straight," I hissed, "I am distressed and certainly not in a mood for people like you. Please keep your delusions to yourself."

He seemed unfazed as he met my angry stare with a nonchalant look. If anything, he looked bored.

"What's your story now? Breakup? Bullied?"

"Why are you so rude?" I was taken aback by the stark honesty.

"Oh," he paused for a second, "I was being frank. Let me rephrase that. Why were you trying to die?"

"Still shockingly rude." I tapped my foot impatiently.

"How about 'I'm here if you want to talk.'?"

"I wasn't exactly going to die," I stammered. "At least that was not in my mind when I left the hospital."

He raised his eyebrows. 

"I can't imagine seeing a tomorrow where Nikhit doesn't exist. I don't want to see the other side of a world without him," I intoned, speaking my thoughts aloud for the first time since I saw his ECG turn into a flat line before my eyes.

Images of emergency staff trying to resuscitate him as they pumped drugs to restart his heart flashed like a cinema reel before my eyes. I closed them shut, wincing as I felt the hollow in my chest where someone seemed to have punched a hole through me.

"And how would it benefit anyone if you die?" he asked gravely.

"Nobody would lose anything either," I retorted.

"Right," he mused, his eyes still burning into my gaze. Something was unsettling about that kind of calmness. It almost didn't seem — well — human.

"Suppose you jump from here and you don't die. You'd break your spine. How would it feel like to be paralysed for the rest of your life, all the while wishing you were dead?"

"I..." I knew I didn't have an answer to that.

"You can't die unless you're entered for this date in the Diary of Death," he said matter-of-factly.

"The Diary of Death?" I raised an eyebrow, more and more intrigued by his eccentric ways.

"Yes, it's a record of every single mortal in this universe."

"You sound like you've seen this diary." I rolled my eyes.

"I have that diary," he met my eyes levelly.

"You have what?" I gasped, still trying to fathom if he was real.

"I stole it from Death the last time I paid a visit," he grinned.

"Wait a second," I stopped him, "So, you believe you shuttle between the world of the living and the dead at will."

"I do," he confirmed.

"Are you mad or am I?" I shouted, exasperated.

"Neither. It's just that your mind is not receptive enough to newer ideas," he shrugged.

"Oh, I just lost someone I loved. Pardon me for not being fully in control of my faculties," I remarked sarcastically.

"Grief is a process of life. It's natural to feel that. What's unnatural is turning your back on life, just because you had a brush with death," he replied in his patronizing voice.

I knew at that moment that I couldn't let that guy go around duping people. I had to dive into the truth and expose him.

"Enough of Zen life lessons," I snapped. "If you really have the Diary of Death or whatever, why don't you just look up my name and let me know a due date?"

"I won't. Because knowing the future ahead of time is a bad idea. People try to change the future, and end up ruining their present, chasing after an illusion."

Excuses again. I was pretty sure by now that he was a trickster.

"Then, let me jump from here and I'll face the consequences on my accord," I said, turning back to the railing.

He shrugged."You womenfolk do know how to blackmail your way through everything, don't you? Fine. Just this once, you're leaving me with no choice."

His hands dived into the pocket of his oversized hoodie as he dug out a heavy leather-bound diary. The greyish cover was matted and torn at places due to overuse, but it looked regally antique, with intricate silver details on the top, beset with specks of what I assumed were tiny blood rubies. For a second, I almost believed it could really be the Diary of Death.

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A/N: Thank you to everyone reading this. I'm trying this out as a genre I've never ventured in before, and I'm willing to experiment. Your feedback would be so much more welcome!