I Fell in Love with Hope(44)

Today is different. I remind myself of that every time the urge to run back into our rooms and hide pokes at the back of my mind.

“We’re gonna get caught.” Although I’m not the only one.

C chews on his nails.

“We’re not gonna get caught,” Neo says through his teeth.

“We always get caught.”

“Oh, for god’s sake. Just pretend we’re going to the roof.”

“We’re not, though. We’re running away. We aren’t allowed to run away.”

“We aren’t allowed on the roof either, you idiot.”

C makes a face of realization, twice as anxious from that revelation.

“Think of it this way, C,” Hikari speaks. “Our artists already drew our paths. So, no matter what, our fates are already decided. Worrying won’t change a thing. And if that doesn’t help,”– Hikari holds her hands behind her back, grinning–“just hold Neo’s hand.”

Neo makes a face. “What?”

Hikari laughs at them. At Neo’s flustered nature and the heated, rosy trail across his face. At C’s obliviousness, the confused puppy tilt of his head.

Her laughter makes my head dip. It isn’t meant for me. I can’t sink into it as I could before. Its edges keep me out.

Neo and C are focused on the mission at hand, but their bodies converse. Even if they don’t hold hands, there’s always a sense of connection. Their fingers brush. Their walking pace equalizes despite C’s long legs and Neo’s skinny ones. They are never too far in front or too far behind one another by nature.

I think of that as I look at Hikari across Neo and C’s hands on the railing. The watch I gave her hugs her wrist, snug with the white band over her scars.

Hikari and I had that connection. That binding distance Neo and C share. That was before this morning. That was before the sun rose, and I drew a line Hikari wasn’t ready for.

—

“Can I kiss you?” she asks. Her voice is permeable. It bleeds into my heart and coaxes me closer. Her seat shifts on the lonely stretcher as she leans just enough to tease.

Our lips chose each other the night they first sang Shakespeare. Our hands chose each other then too, mimicking dances and postures, creating mirrors in pairs. They don’t dare to meet, they don’t dare to touch, but they wonder. They remain in this one intermediate moment of what if.

What if I do touch her? What if I caress the stray yellow strands on her cheek and drag my fingers over the pulse in her neck? What if I do kiss her? What if I start with the cupid’s bow perched just beneath her nose and work my way down, worshiping her with every breath?

I wonder, would she be real then? If I closed my eyes and leaned into the sun, would it set me afire, or would I finally feel the light on my face?

I shake, unable to decide. Hikari’s mouth is just barely open. Her eyes are half-lidded. Her head tilts so that if we took that final step, we’d fit together.

I want her to see herself as I do. She wants me to see the world as she does.

Every time Sony failed to draw breath, or Neo collapsed over his own feet, or C couldn’t hear a word, I used to accept it and look the other way, but it’s not like that anymore. It hasn’t been for a while. Now, with every reminder that my friends are going to die, there she is.

She is not a recycled version of someone I once loved. She is a rhyming line in the poem of my history.

We stare at each other’s lips. We mirror each other the way our hands practiced.

She is what begs the question, what if I’m wrong? What if they live? The yellow lights a path to memories I’ve yet to make: My friends in their old age sipping beer foam, leaving cigarettes lit and unsmoked, laughing in the city, in the countryside, anywhere and everywhere they’ve ever dreamed of going as they tell stories of a rebellious era, marked by suffering and the joy that defeated it back when they were prisoners.

I lean closer to Hikari over the stretcher. My hand draws up to cup her face. Just another barely there line to cross, and I can touch her. Just a minuscule little push, and I can feel her. Just a moment, a breath, a kiss, and she’ll be real…

But what if I’m right?

What if this dream I deny having, of Hikari in my arms and a future where we all smile together is a test? What if this rhyming line ends the same way the last one did? What if I’m left staring into the dark as the stars fall?

My eyes open, and in the black window’s reflection, Time smirks. It laughs over Hikari’s shoulder, the past dangling in its hands like keys on a chain.

My noose snaps. The pressure chokes me. Before I can make contact with Hikari, my hands flinch down to my sides. My breath hitches in my throat. Gravity falters, throws me off my path, and fear throws me against the wall.

Hikari sits there, still holding the edge of the stretcher. I don’t know if she can see how afraid I am. I don’t know if she realizes what I’m afraid of. Either way, I don’t miss the confusion in her eyes that slowly turns to the same darkness she wore when she gave me her memories of pain.

“I’m sorry.”

That is all I have to say. At this moment, that is all I know how to say before I run.

I’m sorry.

—

The stairwell is dead silent. Neo is iron. His jitters are already rid of. C swallows on a dry throat, biting his lip. Hikari keeps a look out, her ears perked, listening for Sony’s signal.