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The first time she’d visited, he wouldn't speak.
Only stare, as if boring straight through her prefrontal cortex to lobotomize her by gaze alone. She’d smiled, for what else was she to do. And asked useless questions.
“How are you feeling?”
He’d spat into the glass like a viper.
The second time she’d visited, he had creaked out nothing but a derisive groan and a gritty, dismissive,
“No.”
The third time, Naomi is better prepared.
“You were good for my career,” she says, lightly, kindly, like a joke.
Beyond Birthday does not laugh.
The time spans weeks between her visits, and each time she lays eyes on him he only looks worse. Not in his skin - that will heal with time, and then one day stagnate. But his mind only deteriorates; his gaze vacates.
Atrophy.
Maybe it’s the thing that keeps her coming back.
The reason she can not, despite her better judgement, leave well enough alone.
She does not need to be here. She does not owe him a thing. Far from it - this man disgusted her with his brutality, his ruthlessness. A sick game, orchestrated all for the sake of his own satisfaction. Selfishness. Mindless indulgence; the hedonistic pursuit of self-satisfaction. Purely for his own amusement.
He does not look amused now.
“Stop coming here,” he says, like a plea, not a demand. It is softer than that. Than anything she has ever heard from him. It is a plume of smoke. “I have nothing to say to you.”
Naomi thinks, then, about why she is here.
And what it is that compels her to return.
It can't be out of a will of her own.
She knows she has never had anything of the sort.
She only ever finds herself in the places she does because she has nothing else.
Though on that night he'd tried to die, she’d surprised herself by how she extended her sympathy. The kindness contained within a body nicknamed Massacre won out. She stayed there, with him, that entire evening through. Waited. Joined him for the ambulance ride; her skin still prickled with the sensation of his charred fingers closing around her wrist. Slept a few nights at the hospital, in uncomfortable plastic chairs, with her jacket draped over the arm. Told Raye that she was working late - perhaps she could have believed it if he did the same. She could tell herself that it was for her sense of duty. And it surely must have been. But she tries not to wonder whether that had overstayed; extended its reach far beyond that of what it had called for.
And it called for nothing.
What of her duty?
What of her anger?
What of it, indeed. Had it once been true that in a moment, she had been insatiably livid? Full of hatred? Had been thoroughly, wholly, and completely disgusted in the person that he was? Thought of smothering him there, in that bed, taking his soft pillow and disturbing the cables running life through his mouth and nose; snuffing him out. Eradicating this cockroach of a man.
To do the world a justice.
To atone.
But on one of those uncomfortable hospital nights, in a room too warm for her long-sleeved shirt, she remembered the boy she could not fire a gun at, and all at once she wept for the both of them, curled into that plastic seat with her face in the crook of her elbow.
How could she hate someone for who their circumstance had led them to become? How could she hate this man, Beyond Birthday, who was surely nothing but a product of the world he had been brought up in?
How could she hate him when she burned, deep within the visceral disgrace of her gut, with scalding envy for his self assuredness and audacious conviction? Naomi Misora, who floated through life on the whims of others. Never experiencing a desire of her own. For the first time, she knew with certainty that she wanted something.
She coveted his determination.
The thought made her ill.
The thought made her alive.
And she knew, for once, where she - not a single other person else - wanted her to be.
She wanted to be in that hospital room.
Just as she wants to be here, visiting, while his will is to insist she leave.
She is not concerned with what he wants of her.
The fourth time she visits, Beyond rolls his eyes.
“I thought I told you not to bother,” he snips. A portion of his upper lip burnt to one corner, his mouth has been reshaped into a permanent grimace. She does not take his expression personally. Much as his nature, he can not change it.
“I’ve brought you something."
He is more receptive then. He cocks his head. Naomi notes, with dismay and regret, that it reminds her of a puppy. Reaching into her bag, she produces a single volume of manga.
Akazukin Chacha.
Surely fire, if anything, could have purged him of his sins in this life. Birthed him anew, the way it does a phoenix. Cleansed, changed, transmuted, reshaped by scorching heat.
It did seem as though the experience had tenderized him. Sharp edges seared off, singed down into something smooth to the touch. Vocal chords fried from smoke inhalation had left him with a voice that choked too hard if he raised it too harshly, so it was kept low. Softer than what it once had been. To Naomi, he appears withered. Beaten.
Scorched.
It had once been, and continues to be, difficult to look upon him. Not for the ravaged nature of his skin - she could be a better person than to be so shallow as this. But it is that, in particular, she finds it difficult to make and maintain eye contact with the man. It reignites a memory burnt into the back of her eyelids.
The way those same eyes had once begged for her through the dance of tall flames.
She could not decipher at the time whether he had been pleading with her to save him, or to leave him be - and still she is afraid of what the answer might have been. She is afraid that she might find it if she continues searching for it.
It is his demeanour, not appearance, that frightens and disheartens her most.
That is the thing that keeps her visiting.
The thing that keeps her speaking.
She needs to see his resolve.
The fifth and sixth times, precisely one month - four weeks - apart, are found to be filling quickly with the awkward banter of acquaintances.
Now, each time she visits, they read through a new volume of Akazukin Chacha. Naomi is not permitted to leave gifts with him, so she must prop the book open where they both are able to see it, and flip the page at his request, hoping they finish the read within the allotted hour - and then she must take it home with her when they are through.
He asks her to read it out loud; and that is the first time she hears his laugh since the fire. It is a sound like tires over gravel. She is sure it used to sound a little like that before it was ravaged by the fire, too.
She can't be sure whether he is mocking her.
She would have turned down his request regardless.
He suggests they take turns voicing characters.
She replies only with raised eyebrows.
The story is boring to her, a grown woman, and it is cloyingly sweet. His enraptured absorption in the text strikes her similarly. At some point, she stops reading it - to watch him. He is more interesting. Though she was, from his previous bout of insatiable fervor, under the impression he is well acquainted with the narrative, he reacts to every plot with the joy and wonder typically reserved for first times. His face is like a canvas made for the express purpose of reflecting the story beats as he reads them. She is caught off guard at how openly he expresses his reactions. At his clear passion. A passion foreign to her.
He gasps at whatever small inconvenience the characters are facing on the open page, and looks up to Naomi for her reaction before she can think to look away; her impassive stare is fixed directly to him. He smiles under her gaze. She reads a reluctance into it that almost directs her to assure him by returning the expression.
The seventh and eighth times are mere weeks apart.
He animates.
And asks about her with an intrigue. He is finally reminiscent, once again, of the man at her crime scenes.
“Naomi Misora,” Beyond says, sounding only as though he were discussing nothing but the weather, crooked grin cracking through, “You’re an FBI agent, right? Do you enjoy what you do?”
The guard signals the end of their visit; a mercy to Naomi.
He calls after her as she leaves, voice straining so hard under the effort that vowel sounds escape as little more than a gust of breath, “You know so much about me. I know so little of you.”
It surely isn’t true, but all the same she doesn't tell him.
She is sure that must be because there is nothing left about her to say.
Upon the ninth visit, she starts to see him as often as the prison will allow. On the tenth and eleventh, she is not above leveraging her credentials for this purpose.
“Naomi Misora,” he says, “How does a person like you gain a reputation for massacre? Don't you think it sounds more like me?”
She purses her lips. The guilt of her earned reputation hangs in front of her like a noose, and her expression answers him better than words ever could.
He grins as wide as he can though his scar tissue, and stares a little too long. She can't help that it makes her return her attention squarely towards the book.
Beyond mutters what sounds to have the cadence of a joke, and it falls flat on her deaf ears. She is listening instead to his screams; and the crackle of flame.
The twelfth visit, he twists his long fingers together while they read, and then goes still. He glances. Bares his teeth in a smile and stares.
The thirteenth time she visits, she says, “Get out with it already.”
He says, through glass, and with an unprecedented boyish sheepishness, fingers twisting the fabric of his jumpsuit, “I find you interesting, Naomi Misora.”
"Hunh?"
"Very interesting."
His nervous gestures fill in the gaps of what he does not outright say. She is struck by his hesitance; it almost has the ability to move her. As though from a daze, she realizes with a start that in her aimlessness she has caught herself wandering down the wrong path.
That she might be lost.
“I’m engaged,” she says firmly, too quickly, before she even processes the intention, with more surprise than with indignance. As if she should think that such trivialities, such meager promises, matter at all to a person like him. She herself has not yet even realized their weight.
Except that Beyond only rasps, “Uh - of course,” and he presses no further. Retreats.
The simplicity and acceptance of it all does nothing but make her feel worse.
Had he become belligerent, she would have had ample reason to retaliate. To snap him back into place with a steely, trained resolve. To remember that the person who stood before her was exactly the same person that had not deserved the level of kindness she had been compelled to grant him. Someone of his caliber is owed and deserves nothing.
The man before her has gouged out a child’s eyes.
Yet somehow, though, she is overcome with the need to explain herself. To smooth over his disappointment. She keeps her mouth shut, because if she does not, she will not approve of what will escape from her.
An apology. Wholly unnecessary, but stuck fast to her tongue all the same.
He adds, “That's good.”
He has now stopped looking her in the eyes.
Her throat is constricting.
She returns her attention to the book, and turns the page for them.
He is no longer reading.
His jumpsuit is crumpled into his fists.
That is the last time Naomi Misora visits Beyond Birthday.
She does not mean to leave him be for so long. It is not exactly meant to be an indication of her deepest, innermost feelings on their last interaction. She thinks it is more likely just the product of a busy, constricting life that is not governed by her own self that keeps her away for longer than anticipated.
But it happens all the same.
Weeks pass, and they pass with ease. They pass without her recognizing the weight.
She could not have known.
When she comes upon the news of his heart attack she is at work. It is a minor headline, and a few days old already.
She excuses herself early an hour later.
She drives in stupor. She fumbles with her keys at the lock and they slip out of her grasp and onto the ground. She stares at them a little too long. As if she is weighing up her options on how to proceed. She picks them up and unlocks the door and now she’s never paid it any mind before but she notices that Raye’s front door has a thumb-turn latch on it.
She sheds no tears, but her chest is full with a tense, heavy thing. It spreads through to her heart, and makes her imagine as though she could also succumb to such a fate in solidarity.
She is the only person who cares to find out what will happen to him; which is that his body is to be cremated.
She has never been able to source information on family; no relations.
She wonders who has given the direction on the treatment of his remains.
She wonders if they know what they have condemned him to.
She wonders idly whether he could, once again, spring forth from the dance of the flames.
She sees his eyes deep within them.
Pleading.
Volumes of Akazukin Chacha sit undisturbed on her shelf, thin dust, like ash, settling atop them. She owns the entire collection. All thirteen. Raye had asked about them teasingly, thinking it a tender memory from childhood. She had only smiled, shrugged, and offered no argument; did not correct his misconceptions.
She has the entire collection in her possession, and yet she never will finish reading them. Not all thirteen. She has no time for engaging in such childish media. She is a grown woman, and she is about to be married.
She can recognize that there used to be a fork in the road once, but through the ruins of scorched earth, she can only make out a single path; and therefore, she will walk it wherever it leads her diligently, without argument.
Naomi Misora has no convictions of her own. She has never wanted anything.