I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“Hikari!”
A car’s headlights breach the fog turning onto the bridge’s road.
“Sam?” Hikari’s voice travels, reaching for me as mine reaches for
her. She turns away from the edge, towards me, like a magnet that
has no choice in its direction. She takes one step after the other, her
bare legs red and her bare feet raw. She uses the railing as a crutch,
but the moment she pushes off of it, she trips off the curb.
A honk blares, and the car swerves, its wheels screeching against
the ice.
Hikari’s eyes shut, her arm shielding them from the light. The tail end
of the car veers off course, and Hikari braces. The shadow
outreaches a hand, but it only knows how to scar, how to watch, how
to push.
Maybe I am a shadow too, but I know what it’s like to fall.
I grab Hikari by the arm and pull her body onto the sidewalk, sending
us both tumbling back on the pavement. Hikari lands on top of me,
then beneath me. I shield her, my hand on the top of her head.
When I look back at the road, the car has already gone, driving out
beyond the fog, not even its tail lights left to be seen.
Hikari is breathless, the panic in her veins returning to something
more familiar. All of a sudden, as she sees my face hovering over
hers, everything I mean and everything I am comes back to haunt
her. She struggles, tears welling in her eyes at the sight of me.
Up close, she sees her friends sick, herself sick, her friends dying,
herself dying. She shuts them tight, shaking her head against the
concrete, pushing at
my chest.
“Hikari–”