I Fell in Love with Hope(9)

My face heats, and suddenly I can’t form a single syllable, let alone a sentence to respond.

Hikari smirks. “There’s a library here, right?”

I nod, and because I know I won’t get any answers from her before I do, I lead her there. The library is different from the atrium, more secluded, less central and medical. It’s where patients can come to read in the plush chairs and find little worlds to escape into.

“Excuse me, ma’am? I can’t seem to find this book,” Hikari says to the volunteer behind the counter. She says a random title and author so out there I’m not certain either exists. “Do you think you could help me?”

The volunteer nods curtly and says she’ll look in the back.

“I don’t think checking out a book is stealing unless you intend never to give it back,” I whisper.

Hikari quirks a brow. “Why do you steal, Sam? You and your thieves.”

“Don’t ask why.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe in reasons.”

“Why not?”

I narrow my eyes at her inability to suppress her teasing.

“We made a hit list,” I say. “We steal to fill it.”

Hikari catches me glancing over her shoulder.

“Coast is clear?”

“Huh?”

It dawns on me that a book is not what Hikari sets her sights on. She doesn’t waste a second hopping up and over the counter to the other side. My jaw drops, neck craning side to side frantically to make sure no one is looking.

“What are you–”

Without care, Hikari undoes the electric pencil sharpener on the front desk and uses a pen to dislodge the sharpener part. I cringe as it makes a noise like breaking glass. Hikari holds it up to the light, testing the authenticity of the blade before frowning when she realizes bolts still bind it to some of the plastic.

“She’s coming back,” I whisper, and Hikari doesn’t bother looking. She takes a few pieces of paper and a pencil, concealing her spoils beneath them. Then, she hops back over the counter, grabbing me by the sleeve of my shirt.

I panic. Every nerve in my body pulls taut. The finite distance left between her skin and mine is so slight that I can practically feel the heat radiating beneath her bandages.

“Hurry,” Hikari laughs, letting me go and winking as she starts running away with me in her shadow.

I gaze at the papers she holds tightly without crumpling. “Are you an artist?”

“Of sorts,” she says, looking over her shoulder and giggling as the volunteer looks around to see where we’ve gone. She storms an empty elevator, using her foot to keep it open so I can catch up to her. Once the doors close, she throws her head back, exposing the columns of her throat. A scar I can’t help but admire peeks from her collar as she searches for her breath.

“A hit list?”

“Hm?”

“You said you made a hit list,” Hikari repeats, her eyes softer now, diluted in the darker color, as if a wave of something comfortable and tired just hit her.

“To kill our enemies,” I say.

“How poetic.”

“You condone stealing because it’s poetic?”

Hikari smiles. Contagious smile. It doesn’t catch my lips, but its crook certainly tries.

“There’s nothing more human than sin,” she says, shrugging. “Now, where might I find a screwdriver, my dear accomplice?”

Being called anything of hers brings back that warmth to my face, making me stutter. “Why do you need a screwdriver?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in reasons.”

I can’t help the laughing breath that escapes me. I shake my head to scare the smile away. I rarely smile, rarely even for my thieves, but even this fear I can’t explain has no power compared to her.

We reach the floor where her room resides. The whole path, our distance, becomes a plaything.

Out of the multiple maintenance employees, there is one who always leaves his supply bag unattended, and though he’s taken numerous falls from a faulty step ladder, he has not learned his lesson. Hikari and I peek in the supply closet I knew he’d be in. He’s fixing a lightbulb, his back to us, wobbling as the step ladder threatens to give out again.

I put a finger to my lips. Hikari nods and watches me carefully step into the closet. Tools spill out of the bag, a screwdriver in the corner. I grab it as quickly as possible, but a draft buckles the step ladder. The maintenance employee falls to the floor, almost onto me.

“Hey!” he yells. I jump over him as Hikari shrieks and shuts the door behind me, the two of us making yet another run for it.

“You were holding out on me,” Hikari laughs.

“I never do this.”

“You never steal?”

“I never run.”

“Well,” Hikari breathes, “you ran for me.”

Under the hall light, a pack of doctors storms through, interrupting us. They rush, residents, the tadpoles of the training pool, following an attending. Hikari and I step back against the wall like cars pulling over for an ambulance. Whitecoat wingtips wave past, two nurses in tow, one with a stethoscope around her neck, another looking at her beeper. Their expressions are unreadable–part of their training.

Hikari follows the responders with her gaze, worry there. I don’t waste time. The patient they tend to is in his own limbo. Our wondering will do nothing for him.