Naegi dropped his gaze from Jill's, looking back down at the ruined book in his hand. "Sorry," he said, offering it back to her. "I didn't mean to pry."
"Huh? What've you got to be sorry about?" Jill didn't take the book back, her grin only widening. "Books are there to be read, that's why Gloomy got them all dolled up for the world. If she wanted them to be a big secret, she'd have left them as sticky journals tucked under her pillow. She'd want you to read her sordid little fantasies!"
"I don't think they're sordid," Naegi protested. He'd gotten one of Fukawa's books from the library when the second floor had first opened, feeling a little curious about just what sort of books an Ultimate Writing Prodigy might produce – and while he was pretty sure a lot of it had gone well over his head, he could tell there was a really emotional love story along with the racier parts.
"Oh, so you have read them!" Jill said, tossing the book from one hand to the other in a rustle of loose pages. "Great! Then you can give me a little literary feedback. See, you may not have noticed, but I've made a few edits to Gloomy's pretty little prose – just a few minor tweaks, but I think they really add to the artistic merit of the work!" And without warning, Jill seized a handful of papers from the book, ripped them out, and flung them in his direction.
Naegi flinched back at the onslaught, half-expecting scissor blades to be concealed among the pages – but no, only plain printed paper drifted to the floor around him.
"So let's hear it!" Jill said, red eyes pinning him in place. "You wanted to talk to me so bad you dragged out that bear to open the door – so go on, tell me what you have to say!" And now her scissors finally materialized in one hand, spinning around to point in his direction. "And don't you worry about being harsh – I take constructive criticism really well!"
Naegi looked from the scissors to the papers scattered around him, not quite sure what Jill actually wanted from him – but he didn't see an option other than going along with her demands. He stooped to pick up one of the most intact pages and looked it over, trying not to be too disconcerted by the intensity of her stare.
The page looked like it had been a dialogue between the main character and her love interest, but it was a little hard to tell. All the love interest's lines had been written over with long repetitions of the words FAKE, LIES, TRASH, and other vitriol. And when he looked at the heroine's responses, it seemed like every line of dialogue had been obscured by the same sentence, written over and over in tiny print.
TOKO FUKAWA WANTS TO BE ME.
"I think I really captured the essence of what she was going for!" Jill said. "Why bother with a hundred thousand of her boring words when I can do the same thing in less than ten, right?"
"Well – I think there's probably a little more to the novel that just that," Naegi hedged.
"Oh, that's what you think? Well, you're wrong!" A splintery crack rang through the air as Jill slammed her scissors point-first into the tabletop mere inches away from her own leg. "I've been reading it all, page after page after page of this tripe, and all I saw was a pathetic little girl's wet dreams about finally being more than the coward she is!"
Naegi blinked. "You mean – you hadn't read any of her books before?"
"What, you think I had nothing better to do than wade through all the drivel she spewed?" Jill laughed, the edge to the sound sharp enough to cut. "I don't waste my time hunched over a heap of papers playing pretend about what it would be like to do the things I want – I do them!"
Her arm shot out to hurl the book across the library, and it hit the nearest bookcase with a crack that knocked a couple more books to the ground. Naegi started to move towards them, his automatic instinct to pick them up, before he remembered and caught himself.
Apparently Jill had noticed anyway. "Don't bother," she said, rolling her eyes. "Every time I get rid of one there's still a dozen more, every single one infested with the same insipid little reader stand-in. I don't even know why she bothered giving them different names – she should have just called them all Toko and been done with it!"
Naegi frowned. Sure, Jill usually seemed eager to voice her contempt at the drop of a hat – but there was something about this that felt different from the insults she'd flung at Asahina or her derision of boys other than Togami. "It really bothers you, doesn't it?"
"Oh, you think so? You think I care about Gloomy's stupid fantasies?" Jill leapt down from the table, landing directly in front of him to lean down and glare directly into his face. "The only thing that bothers me about that crap is that I didn't get a look at it sooner! If I had, I would've known not to waste my time."
"What do you mean?" Naegi asked, not quite following this sudden shift in what Jill was saying.
"Don't you get it?" Jill snapped. "She dreamed up a whole stable of adorable boys, made sure that every one of them would leave their girls – and book after book after book, not a single one of these twits dies in the blood-soaked glory they deserve! Responsibilities, other women, fatal disease, shitty timing – they have a thousand and one excuses for bailing, and she just lets them get away with it!"
"So – you mean you're mad because the books don't all end with the heroines murdering their ex-boyfriends?" Naegi asked slowly.
"All? Hah – she didn't even have the guts to write one!" Jill snarled. "She went on and on about googly-eyed stares and pounding hearts and other crap, like that was what she really wanted!"
Naegi frowned, thinking about all the things Fukawa had said – her obsessive fantasies about Togami, her habit of linking ordinary actions back to something sexual, her intense pride in her romance novels as being true literature. "Wasn't it?"
It was the wrong thing to say. Jill's face twisted at the words, turning into something almost as ugly as Fukawa had always described herself to be. "You think I don't know what she wanted?" Her voice rolled out low and deep between them, closer to a growl than to ordinary speech. "You think I'm confused about the hopes and dreams screaming in my head? I know what Toko Fukawa really wanted, deep down in her worthless little heart, and this," she tore the page from Naegi's hand so fiercely that it ripped down the middle, "was not it."
"Okay," Naegi said hastily, dropping the scraps of paper from his hand. He hadn't meant to upset her that much. "I was just wondering, but I guess you'd know better than me."
"That's right," Jill said, taking a step closer. Instinctively, Naegi found himself taking a step backward, trying to maintain the same amount of distance between them. "You get it, don't you, Makyutie? You understand. I know what she really thought. I know what she was hiding with every fluffy little mask of heroine she tried to use to disguise herself."
Only when Naegi's back hit one of the bookcases did he realize that Jill had still been walking towards him, backing him halfway across the ruined library. He tried to take a step to one side, so that he wasn't pressed up against the wobbling shelf – but Jill sidestepped in front of him before he could.
"What are you doing?" Naegi asked, his eyes darting towards her hands. She didn't have her scissors out, not yet – but somehow, that didn't make him feel any better.
"Oh, just talking." Jill grinned at him, her tongue glistening wet and red as it curled between her lips. "You wanted to talk, didn't you?"
"Well – yes," Naegi said, leaning back against the shelf as Jill's tongue flicked too close to his face for comfort. "But maybe we could keep doing that sitting down?"
"And disrupt our cozy little chat?" Jill's hand slammed into the shelf inches from his head, making it sway alarmingly at Naegi's back. "I don't think so. You're going to stay put right where you are."
