Sina laid on her back, on the roof of a random middle-city residential building, staring at the gray sky, gasping for whatever air her lungs could get a grasp on. Her vision fuzzed, making the already undefined clouds less defined, and a slight ringing started in her hearing. Her legs were still burning from the running, and her arms, which were spread wide against the rough roof, were extremely weak. Sina had no doubt they would be resting here for quite a while, considering that getting home was going to be no easy task itself. They were going to have to stick to the roofs.
Josef was a few feet away, peeking his head just barely over the edge of the building, scanning the crowd for signs of enforcers. He was probably mostly relying on his hearing, as he probably couldn’t see much of the street aside from a small sliver of the far end of the street they just crossed, but it always helped to get visual confirmation that the coast was clear, however minimal.
“You’re going to get spotted,” Sina said quietly, between gasps. Josef backed off from the edge of the building, and himself collapsed onto his back.
“I think we’re clear,” he said after a moment. He was equally as spent as she was. “Let’s take a moment and see what the security on the street looks like after. There’s a chance that we didn’t draw too much attention.”
“There’s always enforcers on the street, and they’re going to have our faces, I wouldn’t risk it,” Sina said sitting up. Her muscles protested loudly.
“I really don’t want to go rooftopping,” Josef said with a slight whine in his tone. “I don’t think I could jump up a single stair, much less across an alley with a bag full of bread on me.”
“Yeah I guess we do have a bag of bread…” Sina ran her hand through her hair as she thought. “Well let's take a rest here for as long as we need, and we’ll reevaluate later I guess.”
“That’s literally what I just said.”
“No it wasn’t,” Sina said laying back down, “It was slightly different.”
It was crazy, Sina thought, what the brain can make your body do when you really need it. She didn’t think she could run like that, sprinting at damn near top speed for a few minutes. She was a street rat, yes, so she had good endurance, but she couldn’t sprint at top speed for damn dear two minutes. She had heard stories from soldiers on leave or other street rats about what adrenaline could do. You could lift things that you never could before, or run faster and longer than you ever thought possible, but Sina never thought it felt quite like that before she started running from enforcers and stealing from street vendors. She thought it felt wonderful, that burst of speed and energy, the pace of thinking suddenly increasing to where she could scan the crowd and analyze routes faster than she had ever been able to achieve. It was what kept her on the street. She hated to admit it. She knew that her and her brother had so many other skills to provide for their mother that would be so much more successful at bringing in money and food, but Sina loved the thrill of stealing and running. She loved the strategy that came with it. She loved avoiding the gaze of every human around her. It was like a game, and it was more rewarding than anything else she had experienced to pull something off, and it was another fun challenge if something went south. The worst part about having to run was how your muscles hated you for exerting them like that. They always scolded you for the next few days for it. Sina kind of liked the burn and the soreness to an extent.
It almost felt like a few hours passed, even though Sina was pretty sure only a single hour had gone by, by the time Sina sat back up and started to mentally prepare to get moving again. As she stood up, she could hear Josef moan in protest. She looked down and saw him with his eyes closed, still firmly sprawled out against the roof.
“We have to get going,” Sina said, fiddling with her hair again as she scanned the roof around them to get her bearings.
“Yeah I know, can we have like five more minutes?” Sina didn’t respond. Instead she walked over to where Josef laid, firmly grasped his hand, and yanked him up. Instinctively, his feet moved to catch him, and by the time Sina let go of his hand, Josef had caught his balance and was now effectively on his feet and ready to go.
“I hate when you do that,” he said, starting to move to gather the bread.
“I know, that's half of why I do it.” They were both scanning the roofs around them now. They were on a flat roof that was above most other roofs around them, which made things harder than they needed to be. They had an amazing vantage point, but moving from where they were without going back onto the streets was going to be a challenge.
Sina went over to the fire escape that they scaled most of the building with. “We might be able to get a good route if we get to that roof there,” she said, pointing at the roof that was across from the fire escape.
“That’s a huge gap, though,” Josef said, walking over. Sina just nodded. “Did you even run the same marathon I did? You’re talking about taking a huge gap like that after running as far and hard as we just did?”
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“Got any other ideas that don’t involve getting back onto the street?”
“Fair enough. You have to go first, though.” Sina said nothing to that, and instead just started climbing down the fire escape. She descended a few stories, trying to measure distance compared to altitude with each story she descended. She eventually got to a spot where she thought she could make the jump without taking too much of a drop. She climbed over the railing of the fire escape, placing both feet facing towards the opposite roof. She ran through the motion of swinging back, loading the jump into her legs, and taking off a few times, without actually loosening her grip on the railing behind her, taking deep breaths every time. She looked behind her to see Josef measuring the same jump that Sina was just about to take, eyes twinkling with an almost imperceptible amount of fright. If she weren’t his sister, she probably wouldn’t have caught that he was scared of this jump.
“It’ll be a little droppy, but it’ll be fine,” she said, “just roll out of it and you’ll be fine.” Josef nodded to her, and she turned her head back around to face the jump. She did one more swinging, fake jump motion, took one more deep breath, and finally took the leap.
Jumping, falling, feeling the wind rush against her face, and just moving in general was probably the only thing better to Sina than the thrill of adrenaline. It was the only thing that made her feel free. Free from the life they lived, free from the concrete and sickly green, free from the enforcers. Sina felt nothing but pure joy in the few seconds she was in the air, leaping from fire escape to rooftop, her hair billowing behind her. She imagined Josef looking at her with as blank of a face as he could manage with a tinge of fear bleeding through the fake expression.
Her feet landed against the stone of the roof, but her feet did not catch her. Instead, she let her legs collapse and her forward momentum took her into a roll, effectively extending the impact into a much longer period of time. The roll wasn’t clean on her part, and she ended up rolling on her side after one good roll over her shoulder, but she was still alive with two legs still intact.
Sina got to her feet and looked at her brother. He was laughing, and she gave him a stare. She motioned at him, and he took the bag of bread and threw it down to her. She caught it, although it was heavier than she expected, and watched as her brother was about to do the exact same jump she just did.
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The twins entered the back entrance of the apartment building where their mother lived as quietly as possible. Josef instinctually tried his best to make the sack filled with bread as inconspicuous as possible, but he knew that there wasn’t really anything he could do about hiding it. If somebody saw them, they would see the sack. It only mattered if they were suspicious or not in the end.
Luckily, on their climb to the third floor, nobody crossed their paths, and the cover story the two of them had to come up with quickly in the back alley never came into use. They approached the door of their mother’s apartment. Sina took out the key, placed it in the lock, and opened the door. The apartment where their mother and them lived was small. Only two bedrooms with a living space and kitchen designed for one person. Sina was always confused by this design choice. It was the cheapest apartment in this building because of how strangely it was designed, and was one of the cheaper apartments in this part of the middle city.
Josef threw the bag of bread onto the floor of the kitchen, then walked into his room and flopped onto his bed face down and groaned loudly.
“Never again,” Josef said, his voice muffled by thick bedding.
“You say that every time we have a job go even slightly south. I swear sometimes we have a job that goes south enough to get us across the street and you still think we’re done for.”
“Maybe I’m just the more rational one.” Josef said, rolling over.
“Yes, because the rational one would give up our only source of food in this house.”
“I know you know we could get jobs easily. Find something in the workers district of the middle city and we effectively triple moms income.”
“Mom would find ways to spend that money on things that aren’t food. She barely makes rent anyways.”
“She’s not financially illiterate, you know. The fact that she’s kept us afloat with a paycheck that pretty much holds rent is impressive as it is, imagine what she could do with two more paychecks.”
“Do you really want to give up what we do for a dead-end job digging holes or moving trash around? Does that genuinely sound better to you than running through crowds and hopping across roofs?”
“It definitely sounds safer,” Josef muttered, “I wish we would at least stop getting into situations like that. Stealing from people that far into the public eye is stupid, I’m surprised we haven’t been thrown into jail yet with how often we do it.
Sina paused for a moment, looking at the bread on the floor. “I’ll think about it. I’ll at least see if there are places we can rob that are less likely to get us chased down. How does that sound?”
“Better than running so fast and far that my feet feel like mush.” Josef put his arms across his eyes, and with the cool air of the apartment and the soft bedding against his back, he fell asleep there and then. Sina, on the other hand, was still standing in the kitchen, looking at the sack of bread they had just obtained. She agreed with him. They probably couldn’t keep this up. But she didn’t want to give it up. It was her favorite thing, to be doing this with her twin brother. Sneaking through the city, hopping across roofs, running from enforcers, listening to people talk about vulnerable shopkeeps, the whole lot.
Maybe I just have to suck it up, she thought, maybe I’m going to have it his way for a year or two.
Sina walked into the living room, and on the center table, which was usually devoid of anything aside from the occasional water cup, was an unusual sight. It was a pink rose. She picked it up and inspected it. It didn’t have a stem. It was just the flower, and had nothing else about it. It was simply a pink flower.
Present from Mom I guess, she thought. She let it rest in her hand as she walked over to their room, with Josef already starting to snore even though he was half way onto his bead, and put the rose onto her bedside table.