He kneels on the roof and lifts the wedge of cheese as if it were a sacred relic from a cratered shrine. The wind tastes of rain and exhaust, and the city below flickers with millions of small, stubborn lights. He bites, expecting divine clarity, but only gets the soft salt of grocery-store cheddar and the chill of his own breath. Still, he closes his eyes and swears the flavor belongs to a lunar banquet beyond mortal naming.

Then the sky above him ripples like a curtain drawn across a hidden stage. Streetlamps become distant stars, and the hiss of traffic turns into the hush of an endless void. He feels the last seam between his fantasy and the world he inhabits pull tight, then snap, not with pain but with release. In that terrible freedom, his imagination does not vanish; it crowns the ordinary, and the roof becomes his final, absurd threshold.