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The savior smells of flowers. Intoxicatingly so.
You don't recognize the exact scent. It might be lily-of-the-valley.
You feel sympathy towards deers caught in headlights as she leaves her throne and walks towards you.
It's Rika. You know it's Rika. You saw her face in those mutilated pictures posted in the chat room. Seeing those wasn't at all the same as seeing her in person, this beautiful woman with her cloud of blonde hair and slinky black dress and carnival mask. This walking corpse, your prison warden with her penetrating, unnerving gaze...
She stops right before you, the embodiment of calm confidence. She speaks directly to you.
"All day long, you've looked so deep in thought."
Have you? You've been focusing on your phone, trying not to think of how Rika's right there and how you're being held hostage by a cult, her cult, and how none of this makes sense you're so lost and...
It might be wisteria, actually. If you make it out of here alive, you're really going to have to brush up on your knowledge of scents.
Rika stays calm as you express your shock. She promises you eventual answers. She takes your fear in stride, assuring it will pass, and that she is simply a person like any other.
Well. That part is clearly a lie. You have never met anyone like her.
Her smile is the sweetest you've ever seen, and she looks at you with what even within your clouded mind registers as clear interest. Even so, all you can think to ask, all you dare to ask, is "do you hate me?"
"Quite the opposite." The words are like a caress.
Head spinning, you can't quite bring yourself to believe it. When has anyone ever shown interest in you? Before this week, anyway, when you've suddenly found yourself at the epicenter of something strange and frightening.
Meeting her gaze only makes you dizzier.
Maybe she does mean it.
"I'm nothing like Ray," she says.
Ray... yes, Ray. He too has an inexplicable interest in you, which is sometimes sweet but mostly scary. Hers is as stark and sudden and even more invasive, but you're no longer shaking. Him, you pitied, wishing to help him but unsure how to do so. Her...
It's the perfume. Or is it perfume? Maybe this is her natural scent, and she's really a fairy descended from the skies. It would explain her unearthly beauty.
"For some people, they need another fear to overcome their pre-existing fear. But not for you. Because..."
And suddenly her hands are around your waist, her lips brushing against your earlobe as she tells you in whispers that you are special, promising you a future as sweet as ice cream while her hair tickles your bare skin and her flowery scent drowns you.
No-one has ever held you like this before. It almost makes you cry. After a miserable childhood, miserable teenage years, and now a miserable university experience where you know you have the wrong major and all your friendships are skin deep, you hold your life in little regard. Which is why you wound up in this situation to begin with, accepting the deal to test the app with a lingering certainty you were about to be trafficked and just not caring.
Only, you do care now. You care about the members of the RFA, who so readily accepted you despite the incredibly suspicious circumstances in which you joined them. You care about V, who saved you from... what, exactly? You're not sure, but you almost certainly owe him your life. You trust V. You see in him something broken in need of salvation.
It's not just him. You want to help everyone in the organization. You even want to help yourself.
All that seems so distant when Rika's cheek comes to rest against the side of your head. Her dress is silk, cool and smooth against your back. And her words, her assurances, as radiant as the picture of the future she's painting...
"You'll admit in the end... that we like something in common."
"...Will I?" The words slip out of your mouth before you're even done processing the meaning of hers.
In turn, she squeezes you closer to herself. Never too tight, never too violent. As gentle and inviting as her compliments are.
She asks you to open your heart to her. She tells you it's your choice. She promises you a kind of mutual possession, one free of your current sorrow.
You turn your head. Rika looks at you steadily. She is so confident. Even if you still suspect that what is going on in this building is insanely illegal, you know that Rika herself truly believes in her cause. She really means to create happiness.
Later, you'll pretend you didn't know what you were doing when you kissed her. But you do. It feels so simple, like you were born to do it. As though all of your frustration and self-denial has existed to make this moment of finally giving your heart what it wants even more exquisite.
And when she kisses you back, hungry but not devouring, consuming but comforting, it's so easy to close your eyes and forget there ever was anything else in the world.
Mere hours later, you watch the cultists drag V away and realize you were just bait, you were always just bait, and all that talk about finding you special and fascinating and even lovable were just lies and ashes.
Rika turns towards you. Her smile is unchanged. She is unchanged. Everything between the two of you is different.
You hold back tears. It's no use blaming yourself, but you do so regardless. How could you have let yourself trust her?
And why, when she reaches for your hand, do you still intertwine your fingers with hers?