I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

Hikari wipes her nose. She runs her hands up and down her arms
from the cold.
“You want to pretend you know me?” she asks. “Because we’ve
spent the past month flirting on rooftops and exchanging secrets?
Here’s a secret for you, Yorick. Hope did fail me once.” She traces
the wound between her collarbones all the way down to the scars on
her wrists. “You don’t realize how powerful loneliness can be till even
hurting yourself isn’t painful enough to sate it.”
The gray skies form thunder clouds and lay her past out before us
like a screen. The sensations of her memories play across her body,
her mind, her eyes, till the words fall from her mouth like stones.
“I had a plan and everything,” she says. “After my parents left for
work, I was going to walk down the road and swim into the lake. The
water is practically black. It reflects everything. I was just gonna–”
she stops, finding the right words. “–let the dark swallow me.”
I remember the day we met more clearly now. Something had
happened, something her killer wasn’t responsible for, I was sure of
it. I remember how she tucked that screwdriver and sharpener into
her pocket. I remember the bandages on her arms. I remember
everything she tried to hide.
Her injuries aren’t from her disease. They’re all her own.
When our eyes meet again, I can hardly breathe. Because how
could I have missed it till now?
Hikari beams. She brings things to life, plants, broken things, and
sick people who need a contagious smile to catch their lips. She
gives people life only to deny it for herself.
“Hika–” I start to say her name, reach out, walk across the distance,
but I can’t. She doesn’t want me to anymore.