Private Finished An Explosion of Emotion

"No... I mean... It looks kind of painful. I wanted to make sure you're okay." Lying to Riley felt wrong, but if Rei was going to be honest with himself, he was unsure of the answer. From his observations, red and watery eyes were bad, but Riley acted like it was no big deal. It was probably not, and Rei was just making a bigger deal out of it than necessary.

"S-Sorry..." he said sheepishly, before quickly moving on to his response. "Anyways, I have goggles for you. I should've given you them earlier."

He stuck his phone back into his pocket while he took out another pair of goggles in his backpack. They were thicker and rounder than what you would see from ones made for swimming, which Rei thought looked significantly cooler. It reminded him of those people who flew airplanes. He held the goggles out to Riley proudly, excited to see how they would look on her. Perhaps the tint in color they had would obscure the colors of her eyes a bit.

That joke only brought out an awkward laugh from Rei. He had never needed to grow back his eyes, but that kind of experience sounded terrible nevertheless. Any discomfort he previously was then replaced by confusion and surprise by Riley's determination to continue blowing things up, however. For a moment he was hoping to stop all of this, but if she was so eager to continue, he had no right to stop her.

"Oh, wow, okay then," he responded quietly while scanning his items for something else to blow up. Something easier to avoid getting hurt, obviously. Picking up a few old children's books he had, he held them out for Riley to take. "How about these? I bet they'll look cool blown up, and I don't think you'll get hurt from them."

Rei took a couple of seconds to think about what it would look like. He found it hard to visualize something like that but gave his best shot based on what he would like to see the most. "I bet it'll be really cool with small pieces of paper flying everywhere!" Now Riley's excitement was making Rei feel hyper, though a small part of him was paranoid about the idea of the pieces of paper being on fire and hurting them.

With his camera all set up, he watched Riley cause the book to explode into an amazing spectacle of powder. It looked better than anything he could have imagined. And safer too. Rei soon broke out into a fit of giggles with Riley while almost yelling, "That was awesome! Are you going to do another?"

Watching was all Rei wanted to do, and he loved this. If he uploaded this online, he would get so many views that the entire island would see it. Rei and Riley would be famous. Rei for his camera skills that showed Riley in only the best angles, and Riley for the show she was putting on. Rei expressed his passion to make it big to Riley as they settled down. He was grinning so much that his face was starting to hurt.

"Why don't they let you? You were so cool!" Yes, there was a lot of damage they did that they would need to clean up later, but it would be easy for two people. It would just take some time. A lot of time. But that was for another time.

Rei giggled at Riley's mocking, then immediately cringed when she brought up cutting her hand off. Cutting off his "hair" was one thing. It was like a pinch. Cutting off his hand sounded like torture.

After squirming a bit, he finally forced himself to ask, "Wouldn't instinct kick in and make you stop cutting? But..." he thought about it for a bit, "having fun is a good motivation. I thought about doing similar stuff so I could go back to Hell. Sounds too scary though.."