1 Prologue

14 months ago

It was a gray-gold sunrise on that day. A hazy glow illuminated the empty streets as street lights flickered on, one by one, up and down the street. The still morning air drenched the city with a laziness that seemed almost magical.

I wondered if it would snow that day.

I watched the skeletons of trees that lined the road, splitting the city into expensive high rises and the crumbling district of the poor. I watch them. The breathing of the city at dawn. The sounds of the birds waking up. The humans.

Every day, there are around three thousand seven hundred deaths caused by a traffic collision. I've watched them die. They come and go. Life and death at the tip of my fingers.

Today, I watched a family. A father. His two sons. One older and one younger. The older one was playful— he seemed happy. Yet I also saw a heavy burden on his shoulders. I turned to look at the younger one. He was still a child. Sixteen years old, I thought. He was silent. Calm. An air of curiosity seemed to surround him.

I knew what would happen, but I watched them still.

It was morning. There shouldn't have been too many cars on the street. I sighed. Some days, fortune and fate coincided with a hint of bad luck. That's all it was— bad luck.

The sidewalk. Laughter. Joy. The four of them together. A family.

The next. A truck. A collision. The cold cement floor.

No one had woken up yet. When the pungent smoky odor of gasoline filled the sky, there was no one to rush to save them. There was no one to call the ambulance. There was no one there to watch them. Except for me.

They laid on the dark, uneven concrete. The father scrambled for his phone. The young one laid there in shock, his head ringing. The older one— his breathing was faint. He would probably die.

I turned away. It was just another day of bad luck.

Ah. Look— I pointed at the sky.

The first flurries of snow had begun falling … and in the distance, sirens sounded.