I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

He tries to distract himself, flipping through a magazine he isn’t even
reading. Seeing Neo this way after surgery is hard enough. The fact
that Neo has a bruise trailing his neck and shoulder makes C’s jaw
grind. He starts the magazine over once he’s reached the end, a
nervous tic, like tapping your shoe.
“C,” I call.
“Yeah?”
“What does it mean to be beautiful?”
“Beautiful, how?” he asks. “Like a flower? Like girls?”
“Like Yorick’s skull in Hamlet.”
“Like who’s what in what?”
“I think that’s what I was in her metaphor. Or was it bones?”
“Whose metaphor?”
“I guess they’re the same thing.” Bones and skulls. It’s all
hollowness.
“Are you talking about Hikari?” It dawns on me we’re not having the
same conversation.
“She called me beautiful.”
C’s eyes flick from my feet to my head.
“You are beautiful,” he says.
“But she says I don’t have arms.” I extend them for emphasis.
“You have delightful arms.”
“She says I hunch.”