I Fell in Love with Hope(58)

The hall’s personnel thins the further I go. Past a corner I once stumbled in, past an old vending machine scuffed by crane kicks, past elevators that once witnessed a spilled tray. Eventually, in that old cardiology wing, my footsteps become the only sound to echo.

They halt once I see you.

Only now, the piano plays no melodies.

No winds dance in your company.

No yellow is left to catch the light.

—

Blood drips from her fingers like rain. It stains her bare legs, smudged teardrops painted red.

She sits against the wall, her shoulders slumped, arms cradling her knees, wearing a gown for examination. Her hair, for the first time in weeks, is down. The yellow strands have dulled to a sullen color. And they’ve begun falling out at the roots.

Her hair tie is on her wrist, neighbored by thin, sloppy slashes. They bleed just above her veins, performed with an instrument sharp enough to cut, but too blunt to kill.

I grab the hem of my shirt and start tearing. The sound rips through the air.

Her eyes peek out just above her arms, but they don’t see me. They’re barren, sightless, the girl who pulled me from the road nowhere behind them.

“Hikari,” I say, sinking to my knees. I take her hand, gently pry it from her legs, and wrap the cloth around her raw, inflamed wrist, a makeshift bandage. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

I bite down as the red seeps through the fabric.

I didn’t see it till now. I didn’t realize how pale she’s become, how a sickly green underlines her jaw and trails the old scar from her collar. I didn’t question why she put her hair up more and more. I didn’t see that her hope was starting to thin, starting to fall strand by strands, until I was the one who pulled it out at the roots.

“Hikari,” I whimper. I press my hands to her frigid skin, then to her hair. Her breathing stutters as I touch the edges of the yellow in search of her.

“I thought–” Her voice may be faint, scratched at, but it’s a lifeline. I listen to her, my eyes wide and reaching. She stares at her hair between my fingers. “I thought I would just go away with time.”

“Sam?”

My friends still a few feet away. C’s arms sag with the box’s weight. Neo and Sony tread cautiously into the isolated corner of the hospital. She doesn’t look up or react to any of them.

“Hikari,” I say. “I was wrong. I’m so sorry. I was wrong about everything.”

I see our enemies crawl onto her shoulders, beckoning her with poisonous promises. They whisper in her ear as viciously as time does in mine. They lull her to their side and they try to take the most precious piece of her.

“Hikari, please,” I say. Her cheeks are soft, the weight of her head as much in my hands as on her neck. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t look at anything. She listens to the poison as I once did.

“I know you’re hurting, my Hamlet,” I whimper, our noses touching. “But don’t leave me yet, I’m begging you.”

My fingers reach into her hair, the brittle strands coming undone, limp like leaves falling from a tree.

I clench my eyes shut, my forehead falling against her chest. Her heart is slow, beating with lethargy. Her blood runs tiresome. Her body acts like a cadaver waiting to be emptied.

“I should’ve been there for you,” I whine, regret hot at the back of my eyes. “I shouldn’t have run away.”

“Sam.” C tries to pull me away from her.

I twist out of C’s grip, getting closer, afraid to be torn away. I remember all the times I should’ve let my touch travel to hers. All the times we stole together, read together, every moment she coaxed a little life from my bones.

“I’m here, Hikari. I’m here. I’m listening. I believe you,” I whisper, my lips barely a breath from hers. I run my fingers to the back of her scalp, shielding it from the wall as I press my forehead against hers.

Hikari doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t say a thing. The numbness has taken her. The animal in the pit maws at whatever pain or joy it can scrounge. I see their shadows folding over her, claiming ownership.

I won’t let them.

Casting aside the smudge of red on Hikari’s cheek, I feel the rim of her glasses against my fingers and the ridge of her nose. Then, I cup her face and press my lips to hers.

They’re soft yet chapped at the edges, full and remnant with her smiles, her smirks, and all her teasing. I kiss her, long and indulgent, like drawing a breath after drowning. Her glasses brush against my brow. Our noses don’t quite fit. But it feels right. It feels pure. It feels like the warmth we shared in our past lives.

I part from her with noise, caressing her face, letting the heat of my breathing keep her from the cold.

But Hikari doesn’t look at me.

She doesn’t say a thing.

Time’s mocking laughter echoes at my back, telling me I am too late.

The cardboard box sits beside me, watching, on the threshold of our distance. Within it, I see all I should’ve appreciated while it was still mine. I hear the door creak to the roof, Hikari’s light shining onto a gray rooftop. Her mischief escapes her lips as she parades her first stolen spoils, me her accomplice. She sits boyishly on Neo’s windowsill, marking our tether with a potted plant, her first gift to me. She dances, holding her hands up to give me a sense of comfort, a yellow blanket on her bare legs. Her affection drifts tangibly, her gratitude following on its wing as she held my first gift to her heart.