I Fell in Love with Hope(18)

“Sam, come here.”

“What about Hamlet?”

“I’m Hamlet.” Yes, she did claim the character. However, those words don’t fit right in her mouth. “What?” Hikari catches my distaste, the way my nose crinkles. “Am I a poor actress?”

“No. You just have nothing in common with Hamlet.”

“Because I’m not bitter?”

“Because he’s not a sun.”

Hamlet is earthly.

“You think I’m a sun?” Hikari asks, head tilted.

“You’re bright,” I say. I put my hand out, fingers apart, mimicking a reach. Hamlet rests at my side in the other. “I feel like if we touch, I’ll burn away like paper.” The picture of her sifts over the hills of my knuckles. She stands there, listening. The kind of listening you can tell only belongs to me.

I retreat, catching myself. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Hikari’s shoulders bounce once. Her amusement pinches her lips, half pursed, half curved. “You actually remind me of a moon.”

“A moon?”

“Yes. Gray, subtle, only brave in the night. Maybe those were our past lives.”

Maybe they were our first.

Hikari raises her hand. Her palm faces me like the pretense to a wave. She takes a step, our distance squirming. Alarm flinches through me, translated into a violent step back. Hikari halts at the little noise my body makes—the shuffle of my clothes, the screech of the floor beneath my shoe. Like I’m prey and her hand is an open maw. Her eyes travel from the trembles to my face.

“I won’t burn you. I promise,” she whispers, but it doesn’t matter.

I can’t touch her. Touching her would mean admitting that she’s more than a ghost of my imagination. It would be admitting she was real.

“It’s alright,” she says.

Coaxing the hesitance away, I raise my hand the way she did. I let it draw parallel, a sliver of space between our palms.

“Good,” Hikari says, the word just barely skidding past her teeth. “Now, pretend I’m your mirror.”

Her fingers trail left, palm following. I do the same, right, following her. Then, she moves the opposite way, so I do too. She draws up. She draws down. She makes patterns in the air. I do the same as if strings tie us together.

“Are you teasing me?” I ask.

“I’m teaching you.”

“How to be human?”

“You’re so caught up in trying not to exist, Sam,” she whispers. “If you’d only let yourself go, you’d see how easy it is. Haven’t you ever dreamed of dancing?”

“I don’t dream.”

“Never?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why?” she asks, and I can’t help but indulge the tragedy in her voice.

“It’s not a part of me.”

“Who stole it?” I almost want to smile at the way her wit survives even the sad moments. “There must be something you want.”

“I want answers,” I say.

“Answers?”

“Reasons.”

“I thought reasons didn’t exist.”

“I wish one did.”

“And what one reason do you wish for?”

Our words fold over each other, dance together as our hands mimic them, act them out, that comfortable, ruinous distance the only thing keeping her mine, ghostly, unreal. But her questions, her voice, her scent, they feel so palpable I want to bottle them.

“I want to know why people die,” I say, but asking why people die is the same as asking the dead to haunt. There’s no one there to answer you. I shake my head. “I know it’s stupid–”

“How long do you have?” Hikari asks, sullen.

“What?”

“Are you dying?”

I scoff. “We’re all dying.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“No matter how you see it, everyone you know is eventually going to die.”

“Is that why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you’re so afraid to be close to someone?”

Neo’s box of books has eyes. It looks back and forth between us like it’s waiting for a victor.

In Hikari, it sees dreams by the plenty. It sees them flooding behind her eyes, heavy on her body. She wears her dreams in yellow, in flowers on her nightgown, and in her trusting nature. She is a feeler. She’s married to feelings. It’s addicting to witness. Whatever she feels next, I know I’ll see it written on her, hanging on her mannerisms.

That’s what he used to do. He used to carry himself without shields. He used to tell the world, even without speaking, everything he ever wanted with a look on his face.

I don’t remember his face. I barely remember him. There are only slivers left, escaped details from the coffin frames. I choose to not remember, just like I choose not to wonder too much or feel or dream.

“Sam.” Hikari doesn’t realize that my name from her lips is a power. Little shadowed and large spined. So for all I say of needing to walk away, you know I won’t.

“Yes?”

“We’re going to meet here every night.”

I blink. “Huh?”