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Naomi keeps having this dream where Ryuzaki cuts off her finger.
It sounds worse, phrased like that. It’s not so bad — no, it is, it’s very bad, but it’s not bothering her. It doesn’t hurt. By the time she’s up and drinking coffee, she barely even remembers the details.
“It’ll hurt more if you move,” Ryuzaki is saying.
Naomi wants to punch him in the face. Wants to sweep his legs out from under him. Wants to run. But her dream-self, who is her and isn’t, an overlapping haze of identity, is disgustingly content to sit and watch.
“There.” Ryuzaki shifts away, letting her sit up. He dangles her dripping finger in front of her. “Isn’t that a relief?”
She can see the bone poking out. I’m going to throw up, she thinks, but it’s distant; closer to her is the relief, just as he says, like a weight has been lifted.
Ryuzaki swings the finger back and forth. The blood is getting everywhere. The ring on it glints in the light.
“You were wrong,” Ryuzaki says idly.
Naomi wants to spit a curse at him. She digs her thumb into the missing cavity on her hand without looking down — no pain at all, which feels nauseatingly incorrect, like an anestheticized tooth at the dentist’s — and pries her jaw open to speak.
What slips out is: “Huh?”
“Look.” Ryuzaki dangles the finger closer. “Your engagement ring. It’s not coming off, even after I cut it. So your theory on why I chopped off my third victim’s limbs was wrong: I couldn’t remove an accessory even if I wanted to.”
Naomi looks at the ring. It is, in fact, so tight that it’s pushing down the flesh around it, like a bottleneck. Why did she have that thing on?
“But you got it right in the end, didn’t you,” Ryuzaki prattles on. “Under my brilliant guidance, but still! You’re a good agent, really. You’re wasted on the FBI.”
“Where would you want me to go?” Naomi hisses.
Ryuzaki laughs, then, really tosses his head back and cackles. “Oh, Misora. You need to stop asking that question.”
Of course sarcasm is wasted on him.
“Hold out your hand,” Ryuzaki orders.
She does. Dream-Naomi does. She won’t be sure, later, if she had the ability to think about it.
“Here.” Ryuzaki drops the finger into her palm. “Your present. My congratulations to the happy couple.”
The happy…?
“Wake up,” Ryuzaki adds.
Naomi does wake then, sheets sweat-covered and hair all tangled and engagement ring as laughable as ever, and closes her eyes again to swim in darkness a few minutes longer before getting out of bed. Just to spite him.