#dmtasd

[ritshou]

draws for @minusram for their fic series that im still so in love with!

[minusram]

4/? bonny and blithe, good and gay

actually yelly anon reminded me that i forgot to crosspost the penultimate chap of bbgg. not sure i actually have any tumblr-only readers, but hey; better safe etc etc

[ch 1 / ch 2 / ch 3] [do make tomorrow a sunny day series here]

They emerge into a carpeted receiving room thronged with what must be at least half a hundred psychics—even if a significant percentage of them weren’t palpably genuine practitioners Ritsu would recognize their trade from the terrible way they all dress.

‘Significant’, of course, is relative, but considering the concentration of spiritually gifted individuals in the general population, meeting even one other esper is noteworthy.

Ritsu and his employer remain mostly unnoticed by the mass of people clustered away from the door, but a few turn to peer at them suspiciously, to size up potential competition. Reigen's taken aback for less than a second—and Ritsu only knows because of the particular way he rolls his shoulder—then he gets started, working the room with his usual oily flair and carving a space for himself where he doesn’t belong with just fast talk and the force of his repugnant but bafflingly effective personality.

He wades into the crowd, a cloud of jovial introductions left in his wake, handing out business cards and subtly enforcing his social superiority in a way that is confident, but not overly so; avoiding alienation by the sprinkling of a few specks of modesty amongst the uptalk. Ritsu trails silently behind.

Reigen cuts a swathe through the room, speaking the way he does to clients and moving with purpose in the face of his skeptical marks. It’s difficult for Ritsu to tell which of them have powers; a staticky aura hangs in the air, but his impression of the energy’s source remains indistinct. He’s unused to sensing others of his kind—every psychic he’s ever met has found him first.

Reactions to the rapid-fire establishment of their standing vary from baffled to condescending. Psychics are either good with people, intimidatingly bizarre, or just extremely lucky, but even in all the strangeness of this past year Ritsu has never met anyone quite like the man he follows now. His employer, energetic, manic with possibility, reaches a new target, and begins again. Ritsu can feel his mood souring, the longer they’re here with nothing happening. He didn’t come to network, he came to help people. And, yes, to serve himself; in hope of personal gain.

Judging by how many people are here, the lure of money or fame had a similar effect on his fellow exorcists.

He’s spared half an ear for Reigen’s spiel, the prattling stream of words a ceaseless rhythm that's grown familiar over time, but tunes right back in, affronted, when he hears the direction it’s taking.

“Oh, yes, I’m Reigen Arataka, and this is my assis—”

“I’m not—”

“My assistant, Kageyama Ritsu. Bright kid, but a little uppity, if you know what I mean. Won’t you excuse us for a moment, please?”

Reigen ushers him away and they reach the edge of the crowd. His employer bends for a harshly whispered exchange, unaware or uncaring of the fact that whispers in public tend to draw more attention than they deflect.

“Hey, Ritsu, pipe down, alright? I liked the silent act, that was good. Keep it up, and follow my lead unless for some incomprehensible teenage reason you are actively trying to blow this. If you ruin our reputation, then where are you gonna find your little exercises, huh?”

“You mean your reputation. I have nothing at stake here, I just work with you.”

“You work for me, kid, and if you don’t want to be cut off, you’ll stop trying to screw up my moves.”

“Your moves, Reigen-san, are the pathetic graspings of a man past his prime and lost in a world on which he has no bearing, a con artist who can only survive by leeching off society and the gullibility of desperate fools.”

His employer’s lips part, then twitch up into a smirk.

“Tell me how you really feel,” Reigen says, raising arch eyebrows at him, “And, by the way— I’m twenty-seven!” he hisses, before turning to greet another psychic who’s just walked up.

Ritsu fades back subtly, uninterested in ingratiating himself to strangers or to Reigen Arataka, and disappears to lean against the wall. No one notices him there, so it leaves him free to watch.

The people move, swirling together and apart in patterns Ritsu’s sure would be easier to track from above, but he does his best—his habitual level of effort; customarily more than adequate for his purposes. He compares what he sees to the display the day before, and finds substantial differences. The cultists were constrained, stuck together in a static train despite their wild laughing. Their grouping was starkly different from the one he observes now. Unnatural, even, though he has yet to devote the matter much thought.

The psychics here are stiff but organic, clustered in clannish clumps that remain cohesive with and within the greater group. Ritsu can’t deny that there seems to be a hub, some sort of slimy nucleus around where the century’s self-proclaimed shining star is making his way through the crowd, interrupting the previous order like sediment irritating a mollusc. Noise rises in the room, low conversations springing up like weeds in his employer’s wake.

A few more people show up, on the verge of being late as the start time on the invitation grows nigh, and receive the same scrutiny that greeted his own delegation of two. The crowd murmurs, louder now, energized by impatience and anticipation, his employer’s voice and bright hair lost in the thrum.

He catches sight of the eccentric uniform—black with pale wooden beads—of the Psychic Moon System, which may or may not be the organization’s real name, but he can’t tell from his limited glimpse whether there are any bandages on the person’s face. Guilt twinges regardless, and it occurs to him that he has no idea how long a Glasgow smile takes to heal. What happened to Shouda Katsukaru is tragic, and no little part of the blame falls at Ritsu’s feet; both because his association with Reigen was what got the man involved with such a dangerous spirit in the first place, and because Ritsu was unable to subdue it when the time came for him to step up.

They were all lucky that the thing was so indivisibly linked with the myth it was based on. Ambiguous answers and tossing anything they could find in their pockets confused it long enough for all three of them to get away—but not unscathed. Another one of his failures; something he can use now, and does, when he needs a little extra boost from his powers.

He wonders if every psychic’s abilities fuction this way. If this negative existence, life spent relying on a capacity powered by murk and suffering, is how it’s meant to work.

A clock strikes the hour from somewhere out of sight, across the room and the mass of people that despite their numbers don’t come close to filling it. Ritsu steps away from the wall to find Reigen, in order to present an arguably united front in the face of their competitors and the expectation that suffuses the room.

The leather doors open, swung by suited security personnel, and a man enters, clad in a pinstripe suit.

Ritsu finds Reigen, finally, or is found, and they stand together in the midst of the crowd as their client, mustached and desperate, steps forward to introduce himself.

Asagiri Masashi has, apparently, put stringent effort towards only inviting bonafide psychics to this event. Ritsu and Reigen trade a silent, speaking look while they can still see each other, before the room darkens and they turn their attention back to the presentation.

Through a slideshow, Ritsu learns about their client’s spoiled daughter; a year older than him but miles further from mature, the product of wealth and an upbringing unfettered by empathic concerns. The kind of girl his mother would call a minx and his father would call a hellraiser.

“Something is inside her,” Asagiri intones ponderously, lit by spilled light from the image of his locked up daughter, ten feet tall. Minori is tied to a bed, ropes snug on her wrists and snaking under the blankets, watched by spirit tags and a sleuth of toy bears; a disturbing picture.

Ritsu reserves judgement on the possibility of possession; he’s experienced enough of the evils of his peers to wait on a verdict until he sees for himself, and can decide on his own what’s been happening. Familiar too are the evils of adults—intimately, a hole in his family only half-healed—whether parent or child is in the wrong here, it’s inarguable that something must be done.

The crowd shifts uneasily, an atmosphere of apprehension gathering at the revelation of their task, but Ritsu is ready to understand, to learn if it’s delusion or premonitive intuition that’s thrown Asagiri Minori to the dark.

Asagiri opens a panel in the wall, a hidden spiral staircase, and leads them down to find out.

The stairwell is narrow, and it takes minutes for every one of them to make it down the story and a half to the small anteroom at basement level. Ritsu ends up next to Reigen somewhere in the middle of the relocation, which means queuing at the top of the stairs and loitering at the bottom until Asagiri shuffles to the front of the herd to open the plain wooden door that is the room’s only other feature, leading the ragged lump of them behind him when he’s the first one through.

It’s an observation room, made of depressing concrete, dominated by the enormous pane of one-way glass that practically composes one wall. Their side, filling in tighter all the time as people jostle to get a view of the occupant, is dimmed; the inside, lit up bright enough that the mirror must be opaque to the girl staring blankly across her coverlet, is fishbowl-like, leaving Ritsu with the uncomfortably voyeuristic impression of being at a zoo.

Reigen, behind him, speaks right into his ear and Ritsu twitches away from the feel of warm breath against the side of his face.

He turns to talk over his shoulder, meeting Reigen’s eyes level with his own since the man is partially bent over to invade his personal space.

“What?” Ritsu hisses, irate.

Reigen flicks his eyes reprovingly from side to side, hands in his pockets, indicating the people that surround them and how little he wants every one of them to be party to this conversation. Ritsu turns back around and mutters out the side of his mouth.

“What? And don’t breathe on my neck this time.”

“I was just asking, what do you think?”

Ritsu concentrates, and senses... nothing. Just a person, kept and unkempt; a girl his age stifled by her father and pinned behind glass for people to peer at, offered up to a parade of probing eyes that seek to find her flaws.

Minori’s head rolls on her neck until she’s looking at the mirror, giving the illusion of eye contact. She looks weary; deep bags dug in under her eyes, blonde hair lank on her forehead.

“Nothing,” Ritsu says quietly, “I don’t sense a thing.”

He stares, rude but comfortable with his lack of etiquette since he knows he won’t be caught, tracing her searchingly with his eyes for signs of possession while Asagiri answers questions, going into a narrative explanation of the smeared blood on his daughter’s whitewashed ceiling.

Ritsu looks and pretends she’s looking back at him, like this whole farce isn’t a gross violation of her privacy. Her head tilts a little as she looks at herself in the mirror, a wry smile fleetingly upon her face, and Ritsu wonders what she sees in her reflection, how differently she thinks of herself compared to his picture of her, built only on what he can presume to discern from the outside.

The psychics grow loud around him, each asserting their experience and suitability; Reigen rises to the top of the pack with glib presumption and loud aplomb, claiming the case in their name about as sophisticatedly as a dog marking territory.

The room devolves, adults barking at each other like animals as they yell and argue, except animals aren’t driven by avarice and pride. Ritsu considers whether the glass is soundproof; concludes it must be since Minori has no reaction to the disagreements being bellowed just beyond her walls.

It resolves in a rock-paper-scissors tournament, a juvenile solution; fitting considering the behaviour of people that are ostensibly—according to society, though he has massive trouble believing it right now—his betters. His employer employs mind games and Ritsu uses strategy. Either age or experience declares Reigen the winner, leaving him triumphant in first place while Ritsu languishes in seventeenth.

Reigen gloats his way through the door, drawing the ire of everyone in the room as he disappears down the hallway that curves around to open on the far wall of Minori’s upsettingly ursine bedroom. He enters as all of them watch, closing the door gently behind him, and goes into one of his usual routines.

Ritsu recognizes his manner, courteous and comforting, as the way he deals with the more delicate clients, fragile people with ghostly problems that seek remedy at the agency. For the first time, Ritsu wonders how many of them he never sees; how many clients’ issues are solved with just kind hands and words, and the attention of someone willing to simply listen. He feels the violation all over again, watching the work, like an intruder to the private rapport Reigen is building with Minori.

The observation room is silent, ogling with bated breath as Reigen massages and chats, drawing a chilling, sordid account of her time here out of Minori’s waifish throat. The psychics turn again, inconstant as a weathervane, to stare mistrustfully at their client when she pleads to be let go.

Reigen emerges, subdued, and Ritsu tries to get a hint of what he’s thinking. Reigen notices him and subtly waves a hand, wait, with an enigmatic cant to his head. Ritsu waits, for now, with silent and watchful eyes, as their client is berated by the mass of people he’s hired for what is seeming increasingly likely to be no reason at all.

It’s looking like a consensus, the room united against a common enemy and piling on Asagiri with the easy conviction of a mob. Majority rule, maybe, but it’s one against many until his employer steps out to speak in their client’s defense.

Ritsu, attuned to Reigen’s theatrics, is not surprised the man chose the most dramatic moment possible to proclaim their client’s innocence.

Well, almost. Reigen’s moment is blown out of the water when a psychic—someone who slipped away into the room while Ritsu’s attention was elsewhere—is blown like an explosive cannonball through the glass, instantly transforming the wall into an expanding burst of shrapnel.

A piece of whizzing glass cracks to splinters on Ritsu’s barrier; his employer is gashed across the face, a shallow cut that in defiance of its depth weeps heavy blood in a curtain down Reigen’s cheek.

Ritsu glares, first at the minefield of glass shattered across the room, then at the psychic who was so destructive an instrument in spreading it, before he’s drawn inevitably to look at the source of the power that caused the victim’s unfortunately violent exit.

Minori laughs at them, lively and spiteful at the chaos she has wrought. Ritsu berates himself for feeling betrayed.

She challenges them with chuckles and mocking words, reveling in the panic that’s starting to poison the room, and Asagiri, reactive, shouts at them to save her. If anyone were to consult Ritsu, he would say that she’s not the one who’ll need saving, an opinion borne out by the maniacal cackling that throws back her body’s puppeted head.

A psychic with long straight hair and a ruched shirt—third in line of fifty-eight—steps forward to try his hand; his incomprehensible but intensely delivered chants prove extraordinarily ineffective. The next is also unsuccessful, and they all blur together into a useless chain until it’s almost Ritsu’s turn, attempt seventeen.

Reigen guides him off to one side for yet another private tête-a-tête and hovers a hand above his shoulder, a pseudo-touch that’s just on the edge of what he’ll tolerate.

“Are you okay with this?” Reigen asks, “You don’t have to do it, we can leave it to someone else.”

The condescension burns, and Ritsu knows they’re both remembering his failure at that apartment building, and in the face of the Kuchisake-onna. He thinks the second man, the ballistic psychic, was also a member of the same group—another tally, two of them now he hasn’t managed to save.

“I’m fine,” he snaps out, crisp, and turns away to end the subject.

“If you’re sure,” Reigen says dubiously, just to twist the knife.

“Positive,” he says, quellingly frosty.

“Okay, pricklepuss, just checking.”

“Well, don’t. I know what I’m doing.”

“Right,” a brief pause, and then:

“If you say so,” Reigen says with a mocking grin.

“You know what—”

“Fine, fine, sorry. I get it. You’ve got this,” Reigen flashes him a confident smile, another expression Ritsu recognizes from work. “Knock ‘em dead, Ritsu, let’s show them how it’s done.”

Ritsu shrugs off the hand that bracingly pats his shoulder as they rejoin the group.

There’s no ‘let’s’ about it when his employer stays behind, one of many watching Ritsu step gingerly through the broken glass. Ritsu makes it through without cutting himself and looks up again to find himself closer than he expected to end up; in arm's reach of the comforter, practically the foot of the bed.

“Asagiri-san,” he says, wary and lacking anything else to call it, whatever’s wearing the body in front of him like a human marionette.

“Ritsu-kun,” she—it—replies.

And smiles.

for added verisimilitude, wait three months before reading the next chapter on ao3! although life willing it won’t take that long for the next chapter

[minusram]

3/? bonny and blithe, good and gay

[ch 1 / ch 2] [do make tomorrow a sunny day series here]

Ritsu does not talk to Nii-san every evening. Some nights he is tired, some nights he is busy, and some nights he can’t bear to imagine what his brother might think of him, if only he were here. Shigeo is a ghost hanging over him, an intangible but metaphorical phantom that remains so despite Ritsu’s newfound supernatural abilities.

Ritsu wondered, when they first manifested, if maybe someone had been watching over him after all, but a thorough check of the house, and even of the room that’s been slowly filled with the debris of a life lived looking forward—once it was done being a shrine to the past—revealed nothing. No ghosts, not even a wisp. Not a trace of emotion; no time capsule messages preserved for him to find.

Ritsu isn’t disappointed. Even if there was something lingering in the halls it would be the remains of a child, not someone older than him, not someone he could rely on. He’s lived his whole life, practically, without a brother—over three quarters, almost four fifths; gaining a facsimile of companionship at this late date would hardly be a fulfilling prize for his psychic achievement.

The setback with the wall was an outlier; despite the impression it left on him as he failed to do the same in reverse, Ritsu really has been making progress in his esper training, a fact that makes his inadequacy today sting all the more. An increase in cases recently, spurred by the growing popularity of his employer’s website, has meant a proportional increase in cases worth his time, higher level spirits that it actually means something to deal with.

Things that only he can do.

---

Days pass, then a week, then more, and it’s all entirely routine except for the scrapes he sometimes gets into with Reigen. Those are strange, different, scary; sometimes even dangerous, but maybe it’s karma presenting him with trials, with tasks he can undertake to mitigate his damage on the world. He makes it away unscathed each time, so the universe can’t be too mad at him. But then again, Reigen does too.

Ritsu keeps going to school, doing homework, going to work, talking to Nii-san, spending time with his parents, and it’s awhile before he sees Suzuki again.

This morning, he left early, and lied to his parents about why he needed to be here at Salt Middle before everyone else. Maybe he didn’t have to—they know he’s capable, they trust him, and it’s not like they micromanage his schedule—but he needed to vent the pressure a little and a harmless lie is better than the alternatives. He has power here, at school if not at home, to do terrible things.

But he’s an inquisitor, not a tyrant.

He watches Mezato, who appears to have made herself into something of a cult leader, from where he sits with his legs dangling off the wide lip of the roof. He’s on the wrong side of the fence, but it seems people never look up, so he doesn’t spare a thought to being spotted as he observes the trail of people she drags behind her while she chortles. They’re all laughing boisterously, at varying levels of volume.

First comes the Official Church of (LOL) First Salt Mid Branch, though according to the Student Council they aren’t officially anything except a nuisance. Kurata leads her little gang with a piercing laugh, her hands clutching her sides as she projects her voice to the edges of the schoolyard. Her three minions follow her in a ragged clump, hanging off each other and stumbling in a paroxysm of giggles.

Caught up behind them, not quite integrated into their herd, is Suzuki. He’s curled in on himself as he walks, bent over the bars of his arms against his stomach, shuffling forward with his hair shadowing his eyes. It’s creepy looking, the way he laughs; an impression unhelped by the sick leering smirk on his face, just visible when his shudders grow particularly acute.

And behind him, in a long snaking line, are the followers, people Ritsu has picked over and found to be non-critical, with very little influence in the running of the cult. Suzuki would be one of them if Ritsu didn’t know what he is. He escapes anonymity simply because Ritsu is unable to ignore him, though from what Ritsu’s heard he thus far hasn’t done anything particularly enthralling besides follow Mezato around and exist while being foreignly interesting.

Of greater note is that there’s a student council member there, blending in and chuckling, wiping tears from his eyes. Ritsu marks him, a bright red post-it flag on the file in his mind; he’ll bring it up with Kamuro this afternoon at the meeting. The only question is whether to do it in front of everyone or in private. Both have their appeal.

By some signal invisible to him, the prayer period is concluded; the ragged procession breaking up and reforming in new patterns as students fall into their ordinary social configurations again. Friends find friends and walk into school together. They seem refreshed. Ritsu felt something, watching them, some tug urging him to join in, but it was an impulse easily resisted, and now it’s gone. Strange.

And worth further consideration, but not now. The bell’s about to ring and he needs to get to class. As he boosts himself up over the fence he keeps a wary eye on Suzuki, still off step, like a satellite just out of orbit as he follows the other cultists inside.

---

That afternoon, when he’s walking to student council, he sees them again. Suzuki is being helplessly carried along under Kurata’s arm; she chatters non-stop while Mezato waves at them from the door of the news room. The other three—Inugawa, Saruta, and Kijibayashi—range ahead of them, taking up more space in the hallway then they should as the group makes its way to the entrance of the school.

Ritsu doesn't engage, though he's spotted at least five rules they're breaking. Even inquisitors take breaks sometimes, and he's still mulling over what he saw this morning. He’s not ready. The boys get quieter as he passes, except for Suzuki who was already silent, then the noise cautiously picks back up again when they think he’s out of range.

Ritsu dismisses them, for now, so he can turn his thoughts to the meeting, where he will undoubtedly be called upon to speak as Kamuro’s second hand in the Cleanup operation. Ritsu has better ears than a lot of people think; he’s heard the other members refer to him as the president’s attack dog. It’s not inaccurate—he knows what he’s become, what his powers have allowed him to be.

But it’s too late now to go back, and he wouldn’t deserve to even if he could; he’s been changed by this, enduringly, turned by dirty work to something darker than he was.

The meeting is as it ever is—Ritsu decides against the instigation of a fellow member’s lynching in a public forum—and then it’s over. He can’t remember what he said, or why, or who about, but surely it was satisfactory; an eloquent offering with salient points supporting whatever Kamuro was going to do anyway.

And of course, whatever Kamuro is going to do is whatever Ritsu told him to do the last time they met like this, privately, after even Tokugawa’s gone home. They’re two peas in a rotting pod, Kamuro and him, and the power slides between them like jello on a see-saw; constantly in flux and just as absurd, leaving sticky tracks of culpability all over both of their hands.

Kamuro seems shadowed, wraithed by negative energy as they discuss how to deal with their cuckoo, the cultist in their midst. Deep, dark shadows sag under his eyes and his hair is wavy and unwashed, heavy with grease. They’re nothing like mirrors of each other, but Ritsu feels a grimy kinship with him like a mushroom growing in the dark.

As they walk out, Kamuro slips on a piece of paper left on the floor in the hallway. It’s easily avoidable, but caught by surprise Kamuro’s foot skids out from under him and he slams into the door.

Ritsu sees his face and knows the shape of the next hill he’ll die on. Kamuro is smart, cunning and devious about it, but petty, sadistic, obsessed with power. He’s distracted from the bigger picture, which is why he values Ritsu, still, even after Ritsu’s learned so much about him.

The student body resents their duly elected president, begrudges the power they gave him, but Kamuro’s terrible reputation has its uses; it’s why Ritsu values him. If everyone’s looking at the person who revels in the spotlight, they might not notice the inky figure hidden by the curtain, watching them from just off-stage.

---

“This time, we got a big one,” Reigen says, brandishing an envelope with a broken wax seal. There’s a curse on his shoulder he doesn’t seem to have noticed; its tendrils drift when he moves, waving like it’s underwater, an anemone made of glowing energy rooted in the grey weave of his suit.

“Bigger than an urban legend, Reigen-san?” Ritsu replies, leaning against the wall as he watches it writhe.

“It’ll certainly pay better,” Reigen says, greed twisting his face before it shifts into a bright smile, emphasized by his hand’s flourish, “Maybe this time we can avoid getting anyone mutilated!”

Not so long ago, his employer proposed a little busting spree. Their attempt to exorcise the Kuchisake-onna went poorly, and culminated in the injury of a professional competitor who’d unwisely attempted to assist. After they helped Shiira Taichoumaru, or whatever his name was, to the hospital—bleeding heavily from the slashes in his face—, Reigen capitalized upon the man’s injury to update his business’ website, to lure in weak minds all the more efficiently.

A side effect has been the uptick in genuinely psychic cases, exorcisms that actually count as exercise; the shame he feels at profiting off another’s misfortune helps him take care of the escalating assignments without too much collateral damage, either to their surroundings or themselves. He’s both intrigued and wary to see what might qualify as a ‘big one’ after all the things he’s seen these past few weeks.

“So what is it?” Ritsu says.

“Some private mansion, I don’t know. Up on the mountain somewhere. It’s a famous businessman, the president of a real big company, but I don’t know if I should say who… can you keep a secret?”

“No, I don’t keep secrets.”

“Liar.”

Ritsu’s hand twitches; point Reigen.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he says. Reigen shrugs easily, conceding to the dig.

“Whatever, you’ll find out soon enough. That’s about all I know anyway, we’ll just have to get over there and see what’s up. So come on, Ritsu, we need to catch the train.”

As Reigen passes him, Ritsu reaches out; the curse crumbles at his touch.

For a moment, psychic silt coats his fingertips, sticking in his fingerprints. He has time to brush his thumb over it, considering, before that too fizzes away.

“Coming, Reigen-san,” he says, dipping to pick up his bag, and texting his parents that work might run late, “But don’t call me that.”

---

After they’ve rattled their way out of town, transferring from the train to a bus and then a hike up a long flight of worn stone stairs, and they’ve spent long minutes surrounded by trees and green smells—a myriad of natural splendours that Ritsu is not equipped to appreciate—they come upon the mansion, which emerges slowly as they crest the mossy staircase.

Ritsu set a brisk pace on their way up, eager to reach their destination and anticipating an equally long trip home after they’ve finished, but he hasn’t overexerted himself. Reigen, however, is sweating more than the weather warrants, and he pauses to take in the view of the massive building, hands on his hips as he gives every appearance of relishing the mildly-less-smoggy mountain air.

“Totally… worth it…” Ritsu’s employer says, endeavouring to seem overcome by the beauty of their environment—somewhat marred by the ostentatious eyesore of a house—and not his own physical limitations.

“Reigen-san, you should really keep in shape. It’s important to take care of your body as you age.”

“I’m twenty-seven, you brat!” Reigen cries, clenching his teeth and a fist in front of him in outrage, “That’s not old!”

He contains himself with a condescending puff; his hand transfers to his chin as he looks up, pensive. “But hey, I can’t expect a little kid to understand,” he says with a knowing nod. “Besides, taking a taxi would eat into our profit margin.”

“We could have taken a taxi?”

“Profit, Ritsu, think of the profit.”

The mansion is enormous, guarded by imposing walls bristling with barbed wire, reinforced chainlink gates, and serious people in suits and sunglasses who bark at them for identification.

Ritsu has a moment of doubt at the set-up, hoping Reigen actually has been invited and isn’t just gate-crashing like Ritsu knows he’s wont to do. But it all goes smoothly, everything in order, and one of the security guards leads them up the short drive to the house and through the double set of tufted leather doors.

They go in, past the vaulted entryway flanked by two double-story staircases, down a hallway floored with flawlessly polished stone that bounces the sound of their steps back up at them, past a room adjoining the back of the house, decorated in the traditional style, to arrive in front of an identical set of doors to the first, padded with creamy off-white leather; so clean they might never have been touched.

Their guide gestures to the brass handles, set into wood the warm, deep colour of chestnuts, and leaves them there.

Reigen whistles, impressed, when they’re alone.

“Nice fucking house, eh Ritsu?”

And with that, he opens the doors.

WELP. here it comes

[minusram]

1/? at night i see the twinkling

[AU; series here]

Teru’s seen him a few times, the boy with all the sugar daddies. At least he’s quiet about it, the building doesn’t need cops everywhere just because some kid can’t keep a lid on his compensated dating. Teru wonders how he’s managing to pull so many people with such a plain face. Some of the men and women that Teru’s seen him with are even kind of cute, for adults. Though they all dress so boring, just suit after suit after plain black suit. Maybe that’s his neighbour’s taste, Teru smirks as he snaps the wrinkles out of his sheet.

About a month ago, Teru’s new neighbour moved into the empty apartment down the hall. He’s a kid, a middle schooler Teru’s age; Teru first learned about it from listening to 2B and 2C, two chatty women who gossip loudly enough on their adjacent balconies during chores that he can use them as a building newsletter.

They’re out again now and so is he, listening while he hangs his laundry out to dry.

The kid lives alone, like Teru, and now that school’s started 2B knows that he goes to Salt Middle School. She shares this, along with a complaint about how her brother acts so superior, just because he happens to live in a district that lets him choose between two schools for his daughter. The information is good, what’s there, but Teru has to sort through a lot of aural chaff to get anything useful from their conversations. And this is out of date; term started a couple weeks ago, for both Salt Mid and Black Vinegar.

The name of the school is familiar, and in retrospect so is the uniform; he had to take care of a budding gang war from there in the spring. And, of course, that’s where Kageyama goes.

Kageyama. The only other esper of any note he’s ever met. A natural, and yet barely more than a commoner; he folded like wet cardboard when Teru showed him his place. Still, he remains a potential threat, and that’s interesting.

Actually, enkou kid kind of reminds him of Kageyama, if only visually. Maybe it’s just the uniform; he’s never seen either of them wearing anything else. But then, he only saw Kageyama the once.

Their paths haven’t crossed since Teru taught him a lesson a few months ago. Maybe it’s time for a refresher course. It might be fun to cultivate an antagonist, someone stronger than ordinary people but exponentially weaker than himself. It’s not like anything else in his life has ever posed a challenge. Psychic powers truly are convenient.

He goes back inside to make dinner, and thinks about paying a visit.

In the mornings, he sees his neighbour leave for school on foot, half an hour at least before Teru even considers heading out.

The timing implies he walks to school, which is odd, but maybe he likes the fresh air. Teru watches him disappear into the city sometimes while he eats breakfast, when the news gets intolerably boring. It’s slightly less interesting than watching a fish, but at least it isn’t the hundredth ‘urgent news bulletin’ about those five students that disappeared. They’re either dead by now or they don’t want to be found; either way, Teru is sick of hearing the same handful of voice clips from their Tragically Grief-stricken Families.

Teru never sees the boy in the afternoons. Enkou kid always gets home late; stepping out of the same black car but driven by a rotation of strangers.

It must pay pretty well, if he can afford an apartment. Teru’s place is paid for by his parents, who live across the city. His mother calls him every so often to invite him for dinner; once in a while he’ll even go, but it’s better if he stays away, for everyone’s sake.

Teru checks the time and gets up. It’s time for him to go; he has a date this afternoon, to see a movie he’s not particularly interested in with a third-year girl he doesn’t particularly like. He’ll probably have a not-particularly-tragic breakup in a few days, before moving on to another one of his fans.

Still, appearances must be kept. He doesn’t bother with the keys as he leaves, locking the door behind him with a flick of his finger as he walks down the hall.

Maybe it’s time he talks to Kageyama. His life’s gotten pretty routine lately, it could use some shaking up.

A few days later, Teru is loitering outside Salt Middle, waiting for his target and attracting the attention of the local students as he leans against the wall, artistically dappled by the sunlight shading through a tree. They admire him, as they should, and form a suitable backdrop for the coming confrontation. Teru’s been plotting how the conversation will go as he waits, and he’s excited to get started.

“Ah, Kageyama,” he says, when he sees a flash of black hair from the corner of his eye, turning to stand in front of the other boy.

Enkou kid stares at him blankly.

“My mistake, I thought you were someone else,” Teru says, with a winning smile, “I don’t mean to trouble you. Go right ahead.”

“You’re… from the apartment,” the kid says, hands straight at his sides.

“Yes, I am. I’m not surprised you noticed, I’m pretty distinctive,” Teru says, with a wink.

“Hm. You are,” the kid says, and walks away, to the car idling in front of the school.

He gets his clients to pick him up at school? That’s so brazen, Teru is starting to like this kid.

Enkou kid pauses, and turns back to him.

“Kageyama-kun has student council. He won’t be out until 4:30,” he says, and then he’s in the car and gone.

At 4:25, Teru finishes off his cafe au lait and walks the block back to Salt Middle School to find Kageyama.

He sees the rest of what must be the student council as they disperse off-campus from their cluster around their unhealthy looking president, but not the member he’s looking for. There’s something weird about the president, like a haze that hangs around him, but Teru doesn’t concern himself with that; he’s here for his foil, not some incompetent, nameless nobody who trails enmity like a smokestack.

Everyone else is gone by the time Kageyama emerges, but Teru’s grown to appreciate the abandoned schoolyard. Absent of anyone but the two of them, it might even be eerie, if it weren’t so sunny. Clouds would be better, thick stormclouds that would blot out the sun and add an electric current to the air. Dramatic effect; this is the kind of thing that looks better in the dark.

No students means no audience, but it also means no witnesses. Instead of a battle of words, like he planned, maybe they’ll just battle. It won’t last very long, but at least it’ll be something.

Any psychic confrontation between them won’t be much of a fight. There’s too great a difference between them; in power, in skill, in hierarchy. Teru’s simply better—even if Kageyama’s been training full throttle, it’s impossible for him to catch up.

Kageyama’s reached the approximate centre of the schoolyard, halfway between the building and the exit. It’s good staging; Teru steps away from the gatepost and into view, to stand squarely across from Kageyama in the opening, backlit by the afternoon sun. A dark shadow stretches on the ground in front of him, reaching toward Kageyama where he’s frozen in his steps.

Kageyama clutches the strap of his bag hanging from his shoulder. He stares, and his powers rise around him, coalescing into the visible spectrum.

The pecking order’s been firmly established, but Kageyama’s stronger than he was the last time they met; the power hanging around his shoulders is more practiced, and Kageyama manipulates his aura confidently, forming it into defensive spikes.

If Teru were an amateur, he might skewer himself flash stepping over there, but as it stands they really serve no purpose but warning him of Kageyama’s hostile intent. He returns the message, letting sparks play across his fingers and lift his hair. The sun washes out the colour of his powers, robbing the display of some of its effect. Next time, they’re definitely going to meet at night.

“Ah, Kageyama,” he says.

“Hanazawa,” Kageyama says guardedly, staring grimly, his spare hand in a fist at his side, “Why are you here.”

Ah, he’s perfect. Teru smirks, and cocks his hip, planting a fist there as he tilts his head playfully.

“What, aren’t you happy to see me?” he asks, opening up the field. It’s exciting, improvising. He throws out the rest of his old script, calculated for a social climate that no longer exists now it’s just the two of them. Kageyama raises a resentful eyebrow.

“You have to ask?” he says. His spikes writhe into faint corkscrews, their ends splitting into forks with his agitation. Clearly, he hasn’t yet figured out how to keep his powers from betraying his emotions, an advantage Teru is happy to take.

“I thought I’d check in on you, see how you’ve been doing. It’s been a few months, you know. How’s school?”

“Oh, perfect, except I’m being stalked by a blond peacock,” Kageyama says with a smile, brittle and insincere. “Have you just been waiting here since school let out?”

“Someone helped me out,”—an NPC—“A boy, with a bowlcut, maybe you know him? He let me know you’d be a bit delayed.”

Kageyama's manifestations shimmer for a moment, then snap back to solidity as jagged, branching spires of hoarfrost, a crystalline thicket of animosity that wreathes his body with razor fractals.

“Of course…” Kageyama muses, and then spits, “That makes sense, Hanazawa. Like calls to like.”

Teru has found a nerve. He’ll think about it later, why Kageyama feels so strongly about dating for money that he thinks Teru will be insulted by the baseless implication that he does it too, but now he rolls with the opening, keeping the momentum of their conversation.

“Bitter, hm? What’s the story there, someone you liked didn’t like you back? Don’t worry about them, Kageyama. They’re the background characters, the unimportant people. From now on, you can just focus on me.” And with that, he attacks.

Teru surges toward Kageyama, pulls up inches away when his startled opponent swings the bag at his face. Teru bats it away with his forearm, snapping the strap as it rockets away to skid across the ground and thrusting his palm out to send Kageyama flying in the other direction.

Kageyama skips; once, twice, before recovering, rolling with the inertia to his feet and reaching out a clawed hand that clenches into a fist.

Wood cracks and Teru zips back five feet in an instant to watch the tree branch spear through the ground where he was standing. He tucks in his toes and throws his arms out in front of him; a wave of powers hurls the branch’s quivering leaves at Kageyama, a maelstrom stiff and sharp as knives.

Kageyama fields most of them, arms wheeling around his head, but a few get through, opening paper-thin cuts that weep bleed from his face and hands. Ooh, that pissed him off. Kageyama glares, swipes at his face with the heel of his hand, smearing red across his cheek as he pants, then slaps the first two fingers of each hand together, ripping chunks out of the asphalt that whizz at Teru’s head.

Teru lets them hit his barrier, bouncing them off with a spray of gravel and minimum effort as he zigzags in flash-step spurts to where Kageyama’s fetched up next to the school. Kageyama’s looking the wrong way when Teru appears in front of him, and the knuckle-punch to the solar plexus blindsides him, propelling him back the scant distance to slam against the wall of the building.

Kageyama’s impact craters the masonry, and Teru follows up with another stone-cracking punch to the gut which Kageyama spins away from against the wall, whipping up his hand in arc that sends a sharp crescent of power slicing at Teru’s neck. Teru tilts his head and it scythes harmlessly past his face, except for where it’s caught some of his hair.

Teru telekinetically flattens Kageyama against the wall with an outstretched hand as he reaches up to inspect his slightly shorter bangs, then flicks the hair out of his eyes. The shorn pieces float away on the wind.

Kageyama’s aura swells, stabbing out at Teru though his body is pinned, breaking Teru’s concentration so he can move. He hurtles forward, fighting with his hands and feet, jerking a knee up that Teru deflects, throwing out a haphazard haymaker that Teru ducks back from before stepping in and hitting Kageyama with an elbow to the chin that knocks him back for Teru to slam his palm against his chest, pressing him to the wall again and pumping him full of electricity.

Kageyama’s mouth opens but no sound comes out as Teru’s power jolts through him. He twists, muscles tense until Teru cuts it off and lifts his hand to let him slide down the wall.

Kageyama isn’t out, but it’s close. He flops his head back to stare up at Teru spitefully where he sits on the ground. There’s still blood on his face.

Teru drops easily into a crouch so his antagonist doesn’t have to look up as far. He’s considerate that way.

“Nice job. That branch thing was pretty good, but the sound gave it away,” he says, helpfully.

Kageyama flips him off with a finger that still twitches with aftershocks, venomous.

Teru grins. This is gonna be great.

At night I see the twinkling stars And a great big smiling moon. My mother tucks me into bed And sings a good-night tune.

enkou = compensated dating

[minusram]

i am rubbing my greedy wasp hands together because now there is canon justification for mob doing The Thing to teru in dmtasd

[minusram]

@whatevsbla replied to your post “Is wiggly figure-arc a thing in dmtasd-au? (i hope u take asks about...”

wiggly figure arc's the one where reigen and mob encounter the evil plant skull who takes years off their lives. since ritsu seems to have only telekinetic skills like in canon, i doubt they would've gotten away, so probably not, but thinking of scenarios about ritsu's reaction to reigen's methods of payment is fun, (i'm glad you do - i love hearing about it. the lack of asks despite dmtasd's popularity is offputting.)

oh! right!

i have a few ideas for the urban legends stuff but i glossed over it in bbgg because i haven’t quite figured it all out yet... >///< [and also i’m impatient... bbgg could be three times longer than it is and still be at the same point in the timeline. i underwrite sometimes and compensate by overchurning the stuff i do put down. one of my flaws!]

however, wiggly figure did take place! it was timeskipped in the second paragraph of ch 3. i know it went bad, i just haven’t decided how bad yet~~ but i have ideas for eventually writing a oneshot or something because that chapter is full of potential. and anyway i need to practice my horror

[also, um, pfft, popularity... you and @guttersnipequeen (found out a little while ago i’m on her ‘fandom basics’ fic list... ????) vastly overestimate my reach! but ah, boy do i appreciate it. my fans.. so good to me..... <3]

sorry i took a hiatus right in the middle of our conversation... i didn’t plan it that way. please ask more questions! i love it!

and finally: ritsu’s reaction to the seeds would be hilarious. and sad. god, that boy and his issues

[minusram]

Is wiggly figure-arc a thing in dmtasd-au? (i hope u take asks about it? i just think about this... a lot)

wow omg everyone should feel free to send me asks any time, i love talking about my shit. and i do feel a little bad for all you guys dangling on the line for like. three months

but... wiggly figure arc? sorry, i’m not really sure what you mean

[minusram]

5/? bonny and blithe, good and gay

it has been a while since the last time, but i just posted on ao3! that means that the previous chapter will go up on here! so enjoy~!

[ch 1 / ch 2 / ch 3 / ch 4] [do make tomorrow a sunny day series here]

Up close, Minori’s body looks different, stranger from his new perspective than it did behind the glass.

It’s imbecilic to be discomfited that it knows his name; of course it does, Reigen just said it right in front of her, and the spirit’s hearing has proven to be supernaturally keen. Despite his rationalization, the thing's over-familiarity crawls with foreboding—gives him shivers.

It’s no bratty child lying casually before him, oozing an un-mortal menace by way of the energy hanging heavy in the air; a visible cloud that spreads pervasive and chilling from the ordinary bed. Something old and fearsome stares out at him through Minori’s deadened eyes, a being very different from the bright and fluttering girl in the videos, or even the mask of her it wore when he walked in.

That mask is gone now, completely, flimsy paper shredded in a monster’s razor teeth.

“Get out of her,” Ritsu says. He means to command; hearing himself, he knows he falls somewhat short of imposing.

“No,” is the mild response.

“Leave or I’ll make you.”

“I welcome you to try,” it says. Minori’s mouth moves smoothly, her voice at odds with the tone of the thing’s words.

Ritsu points his hand at her and gives it a shot. His first attempt does nothing—which he was prepared for. He used only an ordinary amount of power; out of a feeble and misplaced sense of optimism, and to establish a baseline.

He gathers another exorcism under his skin, charging it until it’s stronger than anything he’s ever used indoors. He lets it build further, until it’s just shy of desperate full-throttle, before releasing the bolt of power. It streaks sparklingly into Minori’s body, where it’s absorbed smoothly and without a trace.

The thing stretches and yawns around a smirk, ropes tight on her wrists.

Ritsu raises both hands, holding them close to his chest as he takes half an eye off the thing to build something in the empty space cupped by his palms. The feeling of swelling is invisibly paired with his desire to roust Minori’s captor until a shimmer sparks to life between his fingers.

What will it mean for her if he can’t do this? He’s one of few true psychics here, the only people even hypothetically capable of making a dent. From probing the indistinct presence of the others Ritsu knows he’s in the top three, and it just sucked up his attack like pebbles dropped into a deep, indifferent lake.

Asagiri is a man of both wealth and connections, yet despite his resources he’s achieved nothing in his urgency to save his only child but this meagre showing of frauds. How much longer until Asagiri finds someone competent enough to free her? If Ritsu does nothing, if they all fail her here today, she might not survive long enough for a second try.

Possession is hazardous, the effects escalating with the spirit’s power. Minori will deteriorate every moment it’s inside her, bent to the will of the thing behind her face. How much time does she have, a month? A week, a day...?

He harnesses the thoughts to make himself stronger, feeding them into the wad of power in his hands.

The attention of the crowd is heavy, like a pickaxe between Ritsu’s shoulder blades. They murmur with interest at the light show; exorcism as performance sport. Most of his audience has probably never seen the colourful nimbus of real psychic powers before—even the thing kept its aura within the confines of Minori’s skin. They cluster around the jagged edges of the hole in the window with anticipation, expectantly impressed. Watching him.

Ritsu lets the squirming power go. It blasts from his palms with a faint shockwave that ruffles the ends of his bangs. It does nothing, a log disappearing without a ripple to sink to the watery depths.

Ritsu’s hands drop to his sides and curl into fists, tight with frustration, with vinegar and helpless inadequacy. He allows himself a moment of curdled disappointment before he pivots sharply to exit.

“You’re up,” he growls at the next person in line, jerking an acidic thumb back at the bed.

“See you,” the thing says, amused, as he stalks past his replacement—a nerd with a backwards piccolo—over the drifts of broken glass and through the whispering crowd.

He glares at the ground as the next exorcism starts behind him; doesn’t look for Reigen as he beelines to the far wall. Doesn’t want to hear anything he’d have to say.

 ---

Fourteen unsuccessful psychics later, he’s still just standing around. His employer hasn’t tried to approach him, which is a relief.

Ritsu leans against the concrete and stiffly checks his phone. Still no service.

He’s about to try removing the piece of glass lodged in the bottom of his shoe when hopeful number thirty-one steps up to the plate.

The surprisingly conventional-looking man enters the bedroom. Moments later, there’s a shriek from inside and the man comes spinning out again when the thing blasts him through the air. Ritsu drops his foot and scrambles to catch him in the split second before impact, manages to snag an ankle with his powers, but the man still hits the wall with bone-jarring force.

The snaps of the ropes breaking are loud in the hushed room. Minori appears standing, framed by the gaping hole in the mirror-edged glass.

“You’re not even worth pitying,” it says, her voice grown raspy with malice as it steps out of the prison on bare feet. “How sad...”

Asagiri sends his bodyguards at her.

The room surges into panic when she takes them out. A few psychics run for the door, some approach Minori, and the rest run around like chickens with their heads cut off. It only gets worse when the fleeing psychics discover that the door is blocked. A crush begins to form around the door, a ring around Minori's battleground. Ritsu slides along the wall, away from the horde, presses a tense hand to the smooth concrete behind him as he watches the burgeoning anarchy.

His visibility on the fight is terrible with all the people in the way, but Ritsu can tell that the thing is winning, moving like a super-powered whirlwind to take out the psychics with punches and kicks. Ritsu wonders where those came from, the body or the mind hijacking it, as he raises his other hand.

She’s moving so unpredictably it takes him a couple tries to catch her, but it’s not much use when he does. His grip is weak enough that the thing just carries on, whatever resistance Ritsu’s able to provide insignificant to that level of spectre. Blonde hair flashes as its head turns; Ritsu’s hold snaps like a twig in an ice storm.

He’s psyching himself up to try again when the Psychic Moon Man leader makes his play.

“Shoudou, Shoudou!” the sheep bleat, audible even over the rest of the crowd, surrounding their potential saviour.

Ritsu admits Shoudou’s power is impressive, but there’s an outcry, some acute commotion traveling through the rabble in a wave of confused fear, and he loses track of what’s going on until suddenly the room goes silent.

In the deathly instant of quiet before the room erupts, Ritsu angles his head to peek through a gap in the bodies circling the fight.

He looks, and sees Asagiri haloed in blood, a delicate hand punched through his chest.

Then pandemonium, a deafening tempest of human emotion that batters Ritsu’s eardrums and composure with spokes of horror, alarm, suffering. There’s a lot of screaming.

Reigen scrambles out of the bedlam, pops out next to where Ritsu used to be, eyes wild and wide; rumpled and worried and growing more so when Ritsu isn’t where Reigen expects to find him.

His head whips around frantically until he spots Ritsu, standing apprehensive by the wall on the other side of the room.

Reigen janks toward him, sliding past the bodies that stumble, run, or fall into his path, eyes fixed on Ritsu’s dubious corner of safety.

He reaches Ritsu, skidding up to bounce off the wall when he doesn’t quite get enough traction to stop neatly; almost body-slamming Ritsu with the momentum of his lunge. They end up very close, Ritsu bracketed between Reigen's hand braced on the wall above his head and the other that Reigen runs quickly in a rough, shaky probe down Ritsu’s disheveled sleeve.

“Ritsu, are you okay?!” Reigen yells into his face as he goes to check the back of Ritsu’s head.

“I’m fine, get off!” Ritsu says back, loud but not nearly the same decibel, slapping Reigen’s hand away.

It returns to hover closely over his shoulder, cupped in the air around him just shy of touching. Reigen's body is between him and Minori, but Ritsu darts glances at the mayhem visible over his employer’s shoulder.

The way it moves, hiding its powers under its skin, reminds him of Hanazawa.

Reigen’s eyes flick over to follow his own, and then to the side, calculating, before he hunches to crowd Ritsu against the wall, leaning over to block his view.

“Hey, Ritsu,” he says lowly, intense, “make a hole in the wall. It’s time to sneak out.”

“What?”

“A hole, Ritsu, an escape. While those guys are distracting the spirit, come on.”

“What? No! What about everyone, and Minori?”

“What about our client, Ritsu, hm? How long do you think he’ll last, bleeding out in all this mess. Cellphones don’t work down here, someone needs to get up to the surface and call an ambulance. They’re psychics, they can handle one spirit. C’mon, chop chop.”

Behind Reigen and his chopping hand, out of sight, there’s a meaty smack and a battle cry. Ritsu grits his teeth.

“They can’t, and you know it. They don’t even have powers! I have to do something.”

“Yeah, we’ve seen how effective you are against that thing. What are you gonna do, glare it to death?” he says, with an edgy glance over his shoulder. “Post-death. Whatever.”

“They’re being slaughtered! I can fight, I'm not going to run!”

“You picked a fine time to start caring about other people.”

“I’m going!” Ritsu says, pushing the hovering hand away so he can get by. Reigen slams it back into the wall, cutting him off, and leans in to hiss at his face, eyes narrowed, alive with disgust.

“Are you really that selfish? Get the fuck over yourself, every second you waste arguing with me Asagiri-san gets closer to death,” Reigen snaps, vicious and cold, spitting words that hit like knives. “Your duty is to your client, Ritsu, and you can be damn fucking sure if you don’t save him no one else will. Or did you already forget about Shinra?”

“Shut up! That’s not the same!”

“Isn’t it? How many people are going to die before you’re satisfied?”

“He’s not dead, it’s—”

“But he could’ve been. And we both know it’s luck that he’s in the hospital right now instead of the morgue." Reigen tilts his head, narrows his eyes in cruel consideration and says:

“You think you can take that thing? Kageyama Ritsu, big hero, saving the day. You arrogant brat, you were useless before and nothing’s changed. Go in there now and you won’t come out. You think your parents want to hear that they’ve lost their son?”

Ritsu thinks: ‘again’.

And hates himself, the fracture he'll never be free of; a scar splitting open to weep bitter spite into his blood.

“So you can shut the hell up and listen for once," Reigen continues, "or you can indulge your superiority complex to get us all killed playing knight in shining armour.”

Ritsu drops his eyes to his employer’s lopsided tie and crushed collar, refusing to meet his dismissive face. He can feel the air hiss in his mouth when he breathes, short angry pants.

“Get the wounded out of here. Take Asagiri-san, use your powers if you don’t want him bleeding out on the stairs. Make a hole, now, and get everyone out—unless you can’t even handle that. I’ll follow.”

Ritsu’s hands tighten into fists; hatred like bile, like sitting too close to a campfire, buzzing in his teeth when he unclenches them to spit:

“Fuck you.”

Reigen leans in to say, “Hate me all you want, but you’ve got work to do. So do it.” He pushes off from the wall, spinning and tacking unpredictably back into the mob of people fighting whatever’s inside Minori.

“Where are you going?” Ritsu yells after.

“To spread the word!”

And then he’s gone. Ritsu turns in place, puts his trembling hands to the wall to feel the barrier. The magnesium flare of his rage—at himself, at Reigen, at whatever the hell kind of monster just turned a man’s chest to paste—shoves against the backs of his eyeballs, brittle heat that he focuses into an incandescent blowtorch to shear through the layer of power coating the walls. Instead of blowing out the wall, he infiltrates the material and crumbles it to dust from the inside, until there’s a hole big enough to fit through.

He turns and startles back when he sees the adults clustered behind him, blocking his view of the fighting and holding each other up where they’ve been hit. Reigen works fast.

Someone dragged Asagiri closer to the wall, so it’s the work of a moment for Ritsu to raise his hand and lift the man, cradling him with his powers. Ritsu looks around, at the scared and battered faces of his flock, and snarls:

“Let’s go.”

He glances over his shoulder and steps backwards through the hole, guiding Asagiri’s limp form after. The rest of the psychics feed through into the anteroom, most wounded first; some of them act as sentries and make sure they aren’t attracting the wrong kind of attention.

The spiral staircase is a nightmare, a nerve wracking bottleneck that takes anxious eons to navigate. It burns to admit, but Reigen was right. There’s no way the others could have managed dragging Asagiri up the stairs without telekinesis.

He steps quickly through the secret passage at the top and gets Asagiri through the narrow opening, stabilizing him as the whole pack threads through the door behind him and into the receiving room.

The carpet muffles the sound of their frantic exodus until they blow through the tufted doors and start running for the exit, their steps echoing back at them like gunshots as they pound down the maze of marble halls to the front door.

The house is still beautiful, furnishings luxe and intact, the stone floor glossy and unmarred by the cracks that spidered through the walls and ceiling of the concrete observation room. The glass in his sole clicks every time his foot hits the tile, a staccato counterpoint to the swelling boom of heavy footsteps racing behind him.

Ritsu runs, a hand out behind him to keep Asagiri from bobbing around too much, and digs his phone out of his pocket to call an ambulance. He’s surrounded by psychics, formed around him in a twitchy, frightened pack, but none of them have pulled ahead of him; Ritsu takes the corner in a sloppy skid, phone to his ear and Asagiri swaying behind him, and sees the front doors still closed.

“Get the doors,” he yells at a psychic running next to him, while he listens to it ring.

The psychic, a man with slicked-back hair and a six-pointed star on his forehead, darts ahead to slam them open and they all pour out in a wave onto the front lawn.

Ritsu lowers Asagiri to the grass as gently as he can with jittering hands, setting his wounded client down under the shade of a tree as the call finally connects to emergency services.

“There’s been an accident,” he barks into the phone, cutting off the operator to give the address, “People are hurt, my client is dying.

“We need help.”

[minusram]

see-saw

series here

Mob runs.

He’s in the huge exercise room he always used to use when he lived here, on the same track he always ran. It feels the same as it did back then: mindless, comfortably routine.

Except for twice, his memories of this room are all inoffensive, peaceful even. Mob doesn’t like races, but he does like to run. Before Boss, when he didn’t go outside, he figured out that if he ran fast enough he would feel a breeze. He doesn’t need to do that anymore, but he speeds up a little anyway.

Walking the familiar halls again has been nostalgic, even if the the things he remembers aren’t always good. This past month, in between going out on assignment, he’s visited the handful of rooms that used to be his whole life. They all seem smaller now, except for this one.

His clothes don’t have pockets, so he put his comm—set up to beep when it’s almost time to go—on the ground. It does so; he drops into an easy cooldown jog designed to slow his pounding heart.

Beginning this afternoon, Mob will be living in an apartment for the first time. He hasn't seen it, not even in pictures, but the paperwork that was left for him in his assigned room last night tells him that it is a furnished one-bedroom in downtown Seasoning. There was a key in the packet, so Mob won’t be required to talk to anyone when he moves in. The papers tell him his new residence is on the top floor, in a corner. It has windows, and a balcony, and it’s right next to the stairwell up to the roof.

His new quarters’ excess of egress points is reassuring, but having to leave the 7th Branch gives him a stomach ache; he wonders if this change will be as permanent and dramatic as what happened the last time he moved out.

He finishes his lap at a walk and floats himself up to the scaffolding of the observation pod that hangs from the ceiling. Because of the exercise room’s height, exiting through the observation deck is much faster than winding his way through the labyrinthine passages of the facility’s lower levels. It’s a few stories off the ground, but that’s no obstacle to someone who learned to fly years ago. Still, he doesn’t look down.

He hovers as he unlocks the security door, and swings it open by hand. The walls around the doorframe are scarred, have been since the first time he was up here. He alights gently on the tiled floor; his powers lock the door behind him. He touches nothing as he crosses, avoiding the technology crammed against the edges of the room and the drop visible through the wide windows. The spiral staircase in the centre of the pod leads up to a door, also locked.

Mob emerges in an anonymous hallway. He holds his comm as he pads back to his room, unwilling to strap it to his clammy wrist. Since he got back he’s been kept in a different wing than where he grew up. He gets lost sometimes, but can usually find his way from the exercise room.

He’s only had to impose upon someone for directions once. Twelve days ago he asked a group of slightly older teenagers how to get back to the restricted area. They didn’t tell him, but two Scar members—people Mob doesn’t know, a woman and a girl—intervened and told him where to go before anyone was irreparably damaged. He hasn’t seen them since. Once in a while he’ll cross paths with one or another of the 7th Branch’s upper echelon, but not often. And not Sakurai-san.

And though she isn’t cadre, not Ueno-san either. He’s not sure he’d even be allowed to look for her, but he hasn’t; doesn’t know how, or if she’d be interested in seeing him, if she even works here anymore. He spent years here, but for her maybe it was just a job.

She might not think about him anymore. He doesn’t want to bother her.

Mob presses the button to open his room. It’s on an automatic timer—not a very long one, but he’s already in the bathroom by the time it closes.

He sets down his comm on a shelf in the shower so he’ll hear if it rings. The water streams down the invisible barrier that surrounds it as he scrubs his hair and body with a scentless bar of soap. He doesn’t bother with the towel, evaporates the water away with a burst of psychic heat.

He dresses in items from his infiltration wardrobe—stocked with what Shou calls his “people clothes”—and packs the rest into a sports bag he’s been provided, something like what he’s seen teenage boys carrying in Seasoning.

Mob walks into town. As always, it takes him a few hours, though the facility is out of sight within the first few minutes. The woods are full of strange noises and slippery patches of mud; a combination that’s led to mishaps in the past. Mob is startled a few times by the sounds of animals, but he avoids losing his footing on the treacherous ground and makes it to the city centre victoriously dirt-free.

Mob blends. It’s much easier here than it is in other countries. And he can understand what people are saying, except for when they use slang or refer to pop culture. Mob likes Japan.

He sees no one on his way up the stairs to the apartment, and the door unlocks easily. He toes off his shoes and sets his bag down on the counter formed by the half wall that surrounds the kitchen area. Then he sits down on the floor and closes his eyes.

He widens his antenna, just enough to check on Shou, and finds him in the apartment he’s made his hideout a few kilometers away. Only two of his friends are with him, but Mob doesn’t bother looking for the third and quietly retreats before they notice him.

He also discovers psychic residue in the apartment down the hall. The unknown psychic is not currently in residence, but the traces of their powers are obvious, indelibly woven through the space. The empathic aspects of his powers are unpleasant; he doesn’t probe the threads for emotional information, and will not unless commanded to do so. After all, he already has a mission.

Mob goes to a meeting, riding down to the sub-basement with three others. As the elevator sinks deeper underground, the urge to laugh and chat rises. Mob allows it to consume him, and by the time the doors chime open a sick grin tugs lopsidedly at his face.

The leader isn’t there, neither is his future classmate or any other elite (LOL) members. The cultists are loud and boisterous, and many of them are familiar; he’s seen them at meetings before. He’s banished their miasma before, yet they’re still here. His mouth aches from smiling. As the cultists disperse he frees them and himself from mental interference again, and wonders how many of the same faces he’ll see next time.

He walks back to the apartment building. Mob doesn’t know how to use the municipal public transit, but even if he did he suspects that being in such close quarters with that many people would not be good for his control. Especially after the taxing task of infiltrating a cult gathering. Once inside, he changes into his own clothes. They are plain black, familiar with wear. Mob prefers the feeling to the starchy newness of clothes he hasn’t broken in yet. The softness is comforting beyond the purely animal level; it means he’s been able to keep them long enough to become worn.

He grew up wearing the same thing his whole life, but he could always tell when someone had replaced his clothes.

A psychic presence approaches his door and Mob tenses, but whoever it is continues past and down the hall, entering the apartment farthest from the stairs. Mob considers the other psychic, his neighbour once removed. Are they a member of Claw? Should he alert the recruitment team? Then again, there was already a group in the intake ward when he’d left; he saw them once being escorted through the halls, pallid in their Claw uniforms. There were an unusually high number of them—normally recruits come in singly, and less commonly in pairs. More than three at a time is exceedingly rare.

He’ll include his neighbour in his report to Shimazaki-san, but it might be a while before anyone from the facility is able to investigate. The 7th Branch can only accommodate so many new recruits at once.

His comm beeps, telling him to eat. Mob checks the fridge. Nothing. He checks the freezer. It’s stacked with ready-meals. Luckily, Mob knows how to use the microwave. He makes one and eats it sitting on the floor of the kitchen.

After dinner, he explores his new habitat. It’s strange to have wood and carpet under his feet instead of plastic or tile. The sky looks very wide outside the windows; he draws all the blinds. The bedframe is wood instead of metal, and there’s an extra piece of bedding laid at one end that Mob isn’t sure what to do with. He leaves the puffy thing where it is and curls up under the blankets on the other end.

He lies there until he falls asleep.

His life takes on a routine: he wakes, eats, washes, waits, goes out, finds a meeting, frees cultists, checks on Shou, returns, eats again, and goes to sleep. He stays separate from his powers except for a few minutes each day, when he needs them to disperse the mind control. Despite all his training, Mob still finds it difficult to use them outside the facility.

He lives this way for a month. He does not see Mezato-san again.

He is low on meals when the package arrives, five days before he is due for his first day at Salt Middle School. Within are a manila envelope containing his orders, a stack of Japanese currency, some manga, and a handwritten note.

Mob, well trained, examines the paperwork first. It is an update to his mission parameters; the papers broadly outline a course of action based on the information he has provided in his reports. He is to track the cult’s presence in the school and ingratiate himself with Mezato-san. The orders do not mention how he might do this. In the afternoons, he is to continue infiltrating meetings in an attempt to limit the cult’s influence and find their leader. He has not been authorized to fly outside of prescribed training periods, but his superiors have judged walking to be too slow; instead a car will transport him from Salt Middle School after classes to a rotation of (LOL) meetings, locations he has discovered during his time here.

The envelope also includes a schedule for his independent training and supplemental academic worksheets. He learns that once the term starts he will be fed at school, and that a delivery grocery service has been ordered for the weekends.

The note is from Shimazaki-san.

His interim supervisor tells him to keep up with his studies, and not to forget to pick up a uniform from the school. He also explains the comics; it is literature that should help Mob familiarize himself with the particularities of middle school. Shimazaki-san tells him not to be afraid to ‘liven things up a little bit’. The message ends with a heart.

Mob has never livened anything in his life.

He uses the next morning to visit the school. This early the people he passes are different; they stride confidently and quickly in business attire. Mob tries to keep out of their way, but his natural pace is not well-suited for bustling city streets.

He uses the map he found in the envelope to find the school. He goes slowly so he doesn’t get lost, which the other pedestrians do not approve of, but if he loses his way he’ll have to start over from the apartment. That would waste a lot of time, something he knows authority figures find unacceptable.

When he arrives at Salt Middle School, he methodically searches until he finds an occupied office. A woman sits inside. The plaque in front of her reads Yukimura.

According to the manga, middle school students call their teachers ‘sensei’.

“Yukimura-sensei,” he says. She looks up, startled.

“Yes? Can I help you?” she asks.

“Hello. I am here to pick up a uniform. I have money.”

“But, who are you? A student?”

“I’m Mob.”

“Mob… Oh, Suzuki-kun! I’ve heard about you.”

Mob whips around to check if Shou has appeared behind him before he remembers that the people here all think his name is Suzuki. He turns back to the teacher, whose face has changed. The social anxiety slicks the back of his neck.

“Er. Yes, that’s me. Suzuki Mob.”

“...Can I see some identification, please? Please understand, this is a school after all.”

Mob removes the plastic card from his pocket, another item from the envelope, and hands it over. She looks at it, then slides it back to his side of the desk for him to pick up.

“Thank you for humouring me, Suzuki-kun. Although… I’ll let it go this time, but now that you’re back in the country you should really get used to introducing yourself properly again.”

Mob bows, “I’m very sorry.”

She flips with purpose through a book on her desk.

“Suzuki-kun, where’s your guardian?”

Another test. Mob wonders who Yukimura-sensei means. Is it Boss? Minegishi-san or Shimazaki-san? In the end it doesn’t matter, they’re all in the same place.

“Working, in the United States,” he says.

“You live alone?”

“Yes.”

“You really should have come in earlier, Suzuki-kun. I know the uniform was only ready recently, but you should have gotten your summer homework weeks ago. And sending your measurements in by mail is also… Anyway, I have it here,” she pats a stack of papers on the adjacent desk. It looks thick.

“Oh.”

“And I have your uniform, it’s hanging in the closet.”

Mob stares at her plaque and tries to calculate how much time it will take to finish all the homework he has now. He hooks a finger in his long sleeve and tugs nervously.

“Where were you last year? And last term, were you also in America?”

“I flew here from Hawaii. Before that, I was in France, Jamaica, the Czech Republic, Pakistan, Uruguay, Guyana, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Thailand…” he trails off, thinking. Mob’s never been very good at memorization.

“Goodness!” the teacher says, “No child could have any sort of proper schooling like that. What was your father thinking?” Mob starts to tell her he doesn’t have a father, but she goes on without noticing, “Did you have tutors, at least?”

Mob thinks of fight practice, flight practice, the barrage of tests that Sakurai-san and then Boss have ordered over the years. He thinks of his supervisors, a hazy line that stretches back from Shimazaki-san and Minegishi-san to Ueno-san and further, to people he can’t remember anymore because it was so long ago and he was with them so briefly. He remembers hands, and water, and the gruff voice that taught him how they went together.

“Tutors,” he says, “Yes.”

“And what did they teach you? Math, science, literature?”

“Sort of,” Mob says, flustered by the broadness of the question.

The teacher tuts.

“I’ll make a note in your file,” she says, “It was very irresponsible to neglect your schooling that way, but it’s not your fault, Suzuki-kun. We’ll just have to do what we can.”

She stands up. Mob does too, and she walks to the cabinet next to the office door.

“Though you’re new, you’re still a student, which means it’s us teachers’ job to help you succeed. I don’t think we quite realized your situation when you applied, but you’re here now.” She reaches into the cabinet and brings out a garment wrapped in plastic. She walks back and hands it to him. His new uniform is black. A gold button winks up at him from under the packaging.

“Take the homework, do what you can. We’ll assess it when school’s in session next week.”

“Yes.” He watches her reflection in the window as she sighs.

“Ah well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Just try to keep up, okay?”

“I will.”

He lays the uniform over the papers and leaves Yukimura-sensei to her work.

Day 1449

The first time Mob flies, he is eight. It’s just after his birthday, although he doesn’t know that.

Neither does Touichirou, although even if he did he wouldn’t care. Claw is Claw, no matter how old; they’re useful, nothing more. And if they aren’t useful, they’re discarded.

He takes the measure of the pathetic lump that does nothing but quiver every time he enters the room. He applauds ambition, but that rat Sakurai wasted his chance on this? He prods the child with his shoe. It’s not crying or anything, but it doesn’t respond other than to twist into a tighter ball.

He’s asked the people that monitored it before he expropriated it and shut down Sakurai’s operation, and apparently it didn’t do this before. Apparently, the child had excellent control and stamina when it was allowed out to play, but now no matter what he tries—and it’s been over a month already, he’s tried a lot—it just sits there, trembling. It was very promising, so they say. It better have been, with all the time they spent on it. What a waste.

But there is one thing he hasn’t tried. It’s more of an experiment than anything else, but an experiment it wouldn’t be wise to try on a non-expendable resource.

He grabs it by the arm and it bites back a yelp. Touichirou looks for a handhold that hasn't been recently dislocated. He fists his hand in the front of its shirt instead, unwilling to listen to any more whining than he has to, and drags it up as he straightens. It uncurls enough for him to prop it semi-upright, though it hangs from where he’s pulling its shirt. Good enough. It doesn’t weigh much, anyway.

He tows it after him, and eventually it gets the message and starts walking. He drags it deeper into the base, through an unmarked door and down a compact staircase that leads to a room with windows in every wall. A few of the useless fuckers in black start groveling when they see him. He must look pissed.

With a short wave of his fingers, he blows out one of the walls; the chunks fall a few stories to the ground below.

He hefts the kid, it stumbles after as he strides to the crumbling edge of the floor. He twists his hand in its shirt for leverage and hauls it up; a few seams pop before it’s dangling in his grip, toes just brushing the ground.

For the first time, around the mess of black hair and black sleeves and black bruises, he sees an eye, alert and wary. The mess of its hands clutch weakly—not at Touichirou, but at its own arms—contrasting the taut muscle of his forearm.

“We’re going to try something,” he says to the eye, ignoring the cannon fodder clustered in the farthest corner of the room, “You’re going to impress me, or I’m going to drop you.”

He swings the child up and over the drop. Its toes skid along the ground, dislodging a few pebbles that vanish over the edge. Touichirou waits, wondering if he’ll be able to hear them hit the ground.

It sways precariously from his hand, the shirt slipping up its torso until the fabric catches in its armpits. Shaking, it reaches out with mangled fingers. They twitch, deliberate. Nothing happens.

Touichirou adjusts his grip. Its body swings pendulously as an inch of fabric slides through his fingers.

Its other arm comes up. It holds both hands together as they crook into clumsy fists, then jerks them apart. Nothing happens.

Touichirou loosens his hand until the shirt is straining to cling to his clawed fingertips. A few more seams pop loudly, the only sound other than their breathing.

The child tenses all over, which sets it swinging again, but whatever that was meant to do, it doesn’t. Nothing happens.

Touichirou lets it fall.

Silence. And then, faintly, from far far down below, a smack.

He leans over and peers down, but between the distance and the rubble, he can’t make anything out.

He steps out into the air and skates down to the ruined exercise track keeping an eye out for a mound of black-on-black.

He finds it sprawled behind a particularly large chunk of wall, barely less intact than when he dropped it. A few spots of blood smear its forearm, and a weakly shimmering barrier sputters around its limp form.

Touichirou flicks the protective power away and prods it with his shoe again. Feh. Unconscious. But maybe not so useless after all.

ahhh i just posted something over on ao3 so that means i’m outtng the penultimate posted piece here

[minusram]

upon a crooked stile

Minegishi hates these meetings. They’re a recent development; Serizawa suggested them and the Boss, that bastard, must have thought the idea was hilarious. Now every few months Minegishi has to endure more than an hour trapped in a room with his fellow Super 5 members. The most infuriating part is that they don’t even do anything, every meeting so far has just been them sitting around in a boardroom stewing in silence. Naturally, he forgot his book.

Minegishi levels a low-grade glare at the rest of the table: Shibata, who might approach normal if he weren’t such a muscle freak; Hatori, absorbed in some game system he’s unsuccessfully hiding under the table; Serizawa, that poor deluded sap, who shuffles nervously under his eye; Shimazaki, a cavalier risk-taker with a predictable fuse and a huge grin on his face.

And the brat. At least the meeting won’t be a total waste of time. Mob's on an assignment right now, but is present as a halting trickle of words coming through Minegishi’s cellphone. A totally mundane cellphone, no thanks to Hatori, which is racking up higher charges the longer Mob dithers on the line. His voice echoes around the room as he reports from half a world away.

“I was pursuing leads on the cult that's causing so much trouble for Ishiguro-san. They keep trying to recruit me, so I’ve been walking around the city in the afternoons, in neighbourhoods with a lot of cult activity. Ishiguro-san told me which areas at length, it was very helpful,” he says, followed by a moment of expensive silence. It's one of his more annoying habits.

Minegishi cuts a look across shiny hardwood at Shimazaki, whose smile grows with every word. For whatever reason Shimazaki gets a huge kick out of the brat. Well, out of torturing him anyway. When he realized it was Mob on the phone he made a pest of himself until Minegishi switched the call to speakerphone.

“What actually happened, Mob,” Minegishi prompts, keeping his voice neutral despite his annoyance.

“Um, I was at the meeting, and I was blending in as usual. I cut off my powers so the mind control miasma could affect me. A girl came in with a really thick layer of power surrounding her. I thought she might be the leader, but she only delivered a message from ‘Dimple-sama’. She's definitely a high ranking member of the cult, though.”

Another pause as the brat lapses into thought. Getting harsh with Mob does nothing but make him shrivel up like a dead leaf, but dissatisfaction usually works as a motivator. Minegishi sighs audibly.

“S-sorry, Minegishi-san. Uh, after the meeting I dispersed the miasma on the cultists and followed her. She went to a coffeeshop, and then a women's clothing store, and then an ice cream shop that had a lot of young people, and then she walked over to me and asked 'what the hell I was doing following her'.”

Shimazaki almost laughs, but bites it back just in time. The others range from uninterested—Hatori—to thoughtful—Shibata—to excited but unwilling to interrupt a debriefing—Serizawa.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’m not specialized as an infiltration operative, I’m a combat asset. I… panicked. So I said I was interested in her uniform.”

Shimazaki’s shoulders shake slightly in an effort to contain his mirth; his face is twisted with glee as he slowly keels over onto the table. Idiot.

Mob wouldn't be nearly so open about what happened if he knew Shimazaki and the others are listening, but Minegishi can't be bothered to let him know. It’s already hard enough to get information out of him. He gets why it wasn't Shimazaki or Shibata the kid was assigned to but that doesn't mean it isn't an enormous pain being a ‘supervisor’—and hell if that isn’t a loaded euphemism.

“She asked what school I was from and I told her I don’t go to school. Then I asked her what school she was from because maybe ‘Dimple-sama’ is a classmate of hers. She told me it was Salt Middle School and asked why I wanted to know. I couldn’t tell her I’m trying to destroy her cult, so I said I might visit. She asked if I was ‘transferring’, I think into the cult. But she didn’t say cult, probably because there were a lot of people around. I said yes, because maybe she would lead me to the leader for an introduction. Then she introduced herself—her name’s Mezato Ichi—and asked my name so I told her. She looked at me weird and asked for my full name, but I only have one. I couldn’t think of anything so I… I said Suzuki.”

Damn. Even for the brat that's kind of fucked up. None of the idiots he works with have any emotional intelligence but Minegishi wonders which Suzuki flashed through the kid's head.

“So what do I do now, Minegishi-san?” Mob asks.

“Mob. You do realize you just told your only lead that you’re going to start attending her school,” Minegishi replies.

“W-what? But that’s not… I mean, could you please elaborate, Minegishi-san?”

“She asked if you were transferring to her school , and now when you don’t show up she’ll know you were lying. Once that happens, she’ll never trust you again. And it took you a month to find just one clue, who knows if there’ll be another. You blew it.”

A despondent silence from the line, and then, quietly:

“Ah.”

Minegishi couldn’t care less if Mob fails the mission; the only reason he’s over there is that everyone got sick of the incessant reports from the 7th Branch whining about how some new group was poaching their people. But failure means bad things for the brat; Minegishi isn’t involved there but he’s gathered that much.

Shimazaki has stilled where he’s slumped on the table and Minegishi vaguely hopes he died choking on spit and laughter. Then he sits up, the unholy light of inspiration twinkling in his weird useless eyes. A smudge from his forehead mars the tabletop.

“Well kiddo, that's certainly a mess,” he begins, “I've been listening and—”

“You've been—” Mob interrupts, dismayed.

“—and I think I know how to solve your problem!”

Mob remains silent, probably busy playing back his words from earlier to assess them for vulnerability. Minegishi wishes him the best mitigating the damage.

“All you have to do now is actually transfer to that salty school or whatever! That way you won't lose your lead.”

At any given time Shimazaki is usually at the top of his shitlist—right above the Boss—and it's only because of this stupid meeting that Serizawa is currently in first place. Shimazaki likes to play games, so letting him have free rein with Mob is a recipe for disaster; as Minegishi anticipates how many headaches he'll get from this conversation he can feel Shimazaki steadily climbing back up to number one.

Mob is at least suspicious, thank god, but the brat's always been way too gullible and way too obedient for his own good. As a high level asset Mob is above the authority of most of Claw, but the Super 5 aren’t just any members. Duty's branded him down to the bone by now and despite his own best interests he can’t ignore Shimazaki.

Minegishi privately thinks shit like that is counterproductive if you want to forge an effective tool—too much fertilizer weakens the soil after all—but if he cared about the crap people do to each other he never would have joined Claw in the first place.

“Shimazaki-san, what do you mean? Going to school, it's dangerous... all those people... I don’t have clearance for that!”

Shibata, who has adopted a self-serving one-sided mentorship toward the brat since the end of their short-lived training relationship, speaks up. Minegishi resents him for prolonging this farce.

“It might be scary, but I think a lot of kids your age feel that way about a new school.”

What an imbecilic thing to say; Mob is nothing like other kids his age.

“Eh!? Shibata-san, you're there too?”

Serizawa must take the sudden free-for-all as permission to speak because he also interjects:

“Mob-sempai, I'm sure you can handle it! After all, you're so strong. You don't even need an umbrella!”

“Serizawa, you also—?”

Hatori’s game plays an electronic victory jingle.

“Hear that, kiddo? We're all rooting for you! And out of the goodness of my heart, I'll even file the paperwork with the boss for you!” Shimazaki bulldozes Mob's increasingly bewildered reservations.

With that offer, Mob's fate is probably sealed. Or at least it’s out of his hands. If Shimazaki sells the idea to the Boss then whatever chaos results becomes Shimazaki’s problem. Minegishi would have stepped in—though arguing with Shimazaki is always a chore—but now that he won’t be on the hook for what happens he can't muster a single ounce of fuck to stop it. After all, no matter what Shimazaki comes up with the brat won’t be irreparably damaged.

Minegishi, willing to excuse himself from this travesty now that he won't have to explain it to a superior, tunes out of the resultant four-way conversation. He spends some time contemplating his shitlist. Serizawa still tops it for now, followed by Shimazaki and the Boss, but Hatori, that asshole, is getting up there since he won't let Minegishi piggyback on his powers to save him from the huge phone bill the call is still ringing up. This meeting hasn’t been the worst though, so Minegishi allows Serizawa to drop back down to the bottom, to his usual place right above where Mob hovers in the null zone. He goes through the whole list, adjusting the people who’ve pissed him off lately. Then he thinks about which new botany text he’ll pick up after the meeting.

When Minegishi comes back to reality Mob has been either coaxed or bullied onboard and Shimazaki is jovially insisting that Serizawa should also go to Japan.

Minegishi is positive the only reason Shimazaki is pushing for that is that he thinks it'll be hilarious. Well, it's on his head now, no way in hell is Minegishi going to be responsible for that mess. He’ll be surprised if the Boss lets one of his personal lackeys get that far away though, much less one and a half. Even the half was unexpected, but then again of all of them Mob is most suited to international gruntwork.

Minegishi can imagine it now, the anarchy of those two social incompetents let loose in society. Trying to navigate the unknown jungle of secondary education. Pretending to be people who can function outside of shady psychic organizations. Failing at both, spectacularly. It basically amounts to a mean prank, exactly up Shimazaki’s alley. Hell, does the school even take late transfers? What’s the date? It’s July, but he can’t remember what day. He wishes he could check his phone, but it’s still in use.  God, his phone bill…

His phone alarm beeps serendipitously from where it sits surrounded by his scheming coworkers and Hatori, telling him the meeting is over. It’s about time. Minegishi scoops his cell off the table, tells Mob to report to Shimazaki for the rest of the mission, god help him, and hangs up.

“That concludes the quarterly meeting!” Serizawa says, a little keyed-up. He’s probably been missing his playdates with Mob while the brat’s been in Japan.

Hatori’s already out the door, and Minegishi goes to follow but Shimazaki, grinning like a jackal, blocks his way by leaning on the table in front of him.

“How invigorating, Mob-kun and Serizawa are going to have a little adventure!” he says. For some reason, he sounds gloating. Minegishi doesn’t begrudge him some entertainment—okay, actually he does—, but he’s barking up the wrong tree.

A few years ago, Shimazaki accused him of giving a damn about the brat. He acted like he was revealing some big secret, a hidden weakness inadequately concealed. Minegishi was unaffected because he feels nothing but apathy for Mob, which blew Shimazaki’s mind. What Shimazaki doesn't get is that it's just business. Or at least, it’s not personal. He's never learned how not to care about people, so he blunders impulsively through life doing what pleases him. He’s weak, reliant on the reactions of others to survive.

But then again, all the people the Boss lures in are weak some way or another. Not to mention the brat. Minegishi is weak in circumstance, and he admits that’s a cop-out. Still, he not nearly as dependent as the rest of the inner cadre. He owes Boss, but that doesn’t make him a lapdog.

It does mean he has to follow orders, though. Otherwise he’d never have gotten saddled with Mob. If Minegishi wanted to be responsible for the wellbeing of another living creature he would have gotten a cat. Instead, he has a supremely fucked up child. If he accomplishes one thing during his time as management it’ll be never getting assigned a subordinate again.

While Minegishi was busy ignoring him, Shimazaki was monologuing. What a moron. Minegishi doesn’t ever want to understand what makes him tick.

Minegishi walks around him, dodges past Shibata, and is free. Fucking finally.

And with Shimazaki taking custody of Mob for the foreseeable future, he’ll have a lot more free time. He thinks he’ll grow some plants.

[minusram]

but a penny a day

Previous: bonny and blithe, good and gay

Day 100

Mob has been here for a while, probably. It’s hard to keep track when there aren’t any calendars on the walls and people don’t stop to talk to him. Everyone who lives here must work very hard; they rush him almost off his feet whenever he has an appointment and they never seem to have any spare time to answer questions. Mob isn’t very good at memorizing things, so he worries that when someone eventually stops to explain things he won’t remember what he wanted to ask.

Mob’s biggest question right now is what his job is supposed to be. He sees small groups of bigger kids sometimes when he walks to and from his room; though he doesn’t know what they do they always seem to know where they’re going. He is brought daily to official looking people in labcoats whose jobs are apparently to glare Mob nervous and poke him with things. There are the adults dressed in black he has to follow whenever he leaves his room; their job is also to bring him food and take the dishes away when he’s done eating. But so far Mob’s job is just to sit, and the endless repetition makes him tired.

Mob sits on the bed in his room. He sits on a high table covered in paper while people watch him and take notes. He sits in a big scary chair and wears a weird metal hat while people tell him to do things from the other side of a heavy glass window. Mob doesn’t really like the metal hat since it makes high-pitched noises that hurt his ears, but he thinks he might like sitting in the middle of a big empty room while people peer at him even less. The only time he isn’t sitting is when he is traveling through the facility so he can sit somewhere else.

Mob gets restless and anxious not having anything to do. Sometimes he craves change so much he will lie on the floor when he’s returned home for the day, but that makes the adults look at him like he’s weird. Mob doesn’t like being looked at that way so he tries to avoid doing weird things. It’s hard since he doesn’t know the rules that determine whether something is normal or not.

Right now he is trying to entertain himself without bothering the guard outside, but there isn’t a lot to do. So far Mob has made his bed, examined (again) the big symbol painted on the floor, and tried to figure out how much time until dinner by the noises of people moving in the hall. He’s counted the tiles that cover the walls, the lights tucked high along the edges of the ceiling, how many steps it takes to trace the recessed band of carvings that circles the room at shoulder height. He considers making his bed again—it looks a little messy—but just thinking about undoing his work gives him a hot twist in his stomach. The big coil that perches on the ceiling hums and starts up a shimmering glow.

Mob wishes he could live somewhere without a machine looming down at him from the middle of the room like an unfriendly corkscrew. It sparks sometimes which startles him, and he’s afraid to sleep under it in case it comes loose in the night and crushes him. After he moved here he spent nights dragging his blankets into the bathroom at bedtime and days slowly pushing his bed out from under its gaze.

Now the bed is pressed to the back wall, next to the door to his bathroom. Mob opens the door and gets a drink of water for something to do; the water streams down his left cheek as he drinks from the tap. He dries off with his towel and considers taking a shower.

Showering is a new skill, and navigating the bathroom by himself makes Mob feel grown-up. He didn’t use to be able to, but one of the adults dressed in black taught him and now he can. Mob’s best memories are from the times when the older man would crouch down next to him and show how to manipulate the low taps. The way the man took his hands to guide them was a bit scary—Mob isn’t used to prolonged touch—but also kind of nice. Mob hasn’t seen him since though; maybe the man’s job is just to teach people to use the shower? A tiny smile blooms on his face at the ridiculous idea. In the other room, the coil grows silent.

Mob exits the bathroom, cheered by his joke, and resolves to make his bed again.

Day 1327

Mob often finds himself reading reports from the wrong side of a desk. Technically he’s not supposed to, but it’s the easiest way to learn what his supervisors want from him. It’s his flaws laid out, bare and simple, clearer than anything he’s ever been able to parse from conversation. Mob is not proficient at sifting through the minefield of hidden signals behind other people’s faces and words; despite his efforts at tranquility it’s a task that always ratchets something tight and tense inside him.

Mob twitches upright when he hears footsteps from the hallway, straightens his head from its weird angle and tries not to look guilty as Ueno-san walks into her office. She goes past him to sit at her desk without looking down. Mob twists his fingers around his opposite wrist.

When she’s settled, she picks up the haphazardly stacked reports and gives them a brisk tap against the desk to straighten them. Mob’s shoulders loosen a minuscule fraction when the newly ordered pile is laid down again; the crisp square corners are a comfort compared to the former chaos. Ueno-san shoots a look at him from under her eyelashes.

The expression on her face is unfamiliar, and Mob tries to memorize it so he can figure it out later. Tonight when he’s alone he’ll go through the catalogue in his head, a picturebook of emotions snapped from the outside, and see if he can understand why she looks at him the way she does. For now, he’ll just have to hope he didn’t miss anything too important in the nuances he is unable to pick up.

He’s here to learn all the things he did wrong in the last round of tests so he can improve. There are a lot of papers on her desk. Mob listens as she starts reading them.

Day 1405

Mob is exercising on the track when an explosion blows through the wall in front of him. He skids uneasily to a stop and almost falls. A slight figure shrouded in black skips across the ground like a stone from the blast; the limp body rolls to a stop at the far end of the cavernous room as a tall person clambers through the crumbling hole with spare, elegant movements. From the other side of the hole, Mob hears faint groaning. He thinks it might be Sakurai-san. The newcomer straightens, dusts some grit from his bicep, and Mob senses a languid wave of power wash up against the edges of the room.

The man catches sight of Mob, or maybe just senses him, and all that power is suddenly pointed right at him. Mob reflexively shuffles back a little, his grip on himself so tight his nails dig deep into his forearm. His head drops down between his shoulders to stare at the ground as a rumble of displeasure rises from the suited form in front of him. When the man speaks, tone flat with malice, Mob cowers.

“What the hell is this.”

This is how Mob meets Boss.

Day 1724

Shimazaki-san is dangerous. Not in the way that Boss is dangerous, but in the way kids are dangerous to bugs and other things that don’t count as people.

Ever since Boss moved him to HQ Mob’s been learning how to fight, mostly against Shimazaki-san and Minegishi-san. He trained with Shibata-san briefly, but they aren’t compatible sparring partners. They both hold back too much.

Fight training is always difficult but when Mob faces Shimazaki-san he also combats his opponent’s vicious glee. Shimazaki-san just wants to have fun—and an unresponsive target is no fun at all—so every time, every single time Mob faces him across the scarred floor of the room he’s been ordered to spend time in every week, Shimazaki-san does his best to make Mob lose control. Sometimes, on bad days, it even works.

Mob suspects that if Shimazaki-san actually got his way only one of them would walk away, but it’s only training in the end. A weapon you can’t control is useless, but so is a broken one.

Weapons also need wielders. Joining HQ changed his life in many ways, and notably it has upheaved his entire personal command structure. His new position requires a new supervisor, and on Boss’s orders it can’t be anyone lower than the most inner cadre of Claw. Shibata-san is unsuitable in both temperament and strategic ability, so that just leaves the other two.

Mob is secretly glad, as fervently as he can be without going overboard, that Boss chose Minegishi-san.

Day 2343

Mob meets Suzuki-san only once, because he does something terrible.

Years later he pores over how her face moved when she looked at him, and he wonders what she was feeling. Confused pity? Jealous disgust? Sympathetic cruelty? He’ll never know.

Day 2611

Mob keeps an eye on the spiky red hair. Even in Wales, it’s a pretty uncommon style.

Despite that, Mob is having more and more trouble keeping track of the boy he is following. It’s the start of a three day weekend that marks the end of summer here and people are out in force, enjoying the dry-for-once weather and clogging the sidewalk. Mob doesn’t know what is giving Shou-san an edge, whether it’s familiarity with the landscape, the ability to navigate masses of people, or a little psychic help, but Mob is trailing further behind with each passing second—he’s getting increasingly worried Shou-san will leave him behind and not even notice.

Mob is short and at eleven years old he is smaller than most of the pedestrians surrounding him, especially since he’s Japanese. Shou-san is a bit taller, which makes him easier to spot, but it also means his legs are longer.

Mob glances up, craning to see around the heads of the natives, and is unpleasantly surprised when he can’t find the head he’s looking for. The stress starts to get to him. He doesn’t speak the language and his drawing skills are nonexistent, so it will be impossible for him to ask anyone if they’ve seen his unexpected patron for this venture—or maybe he should say his patron’s unexpected son. Mob imagines telling Boss his son disappeared in broad daylight, and doesn’t enjoy the thought. This is bad.

Mob, recognizing the change in his breathing and what it heralds, takes action. His hand is firm around his wrist as he swiftly smooths away the turmoil inside him until he is flat and still as a pane of glass on an unmoving sea. It only takes a second and Mob is distantly ashamed he let himself go that much. He knows better.

Turning to his left, where a banner of red has has become visible in the corner of his eye, he levels a gaze that is determinedly not beseeching at the boy now beside him. It begins to rain.

“Shou-san, your father would be upset if you were lost under my care. Please, stop trying to lose me in the crowd.”

“Tch, keep up then!”

“...Of course. I’ll follow your orders, Shou-san. Since I can’t access my psychic powers I’ll just have to work harder to keep pace.”

“Whaddya mean, access? What the hell have they been doing to you in there?”

“Ah, I was unclear. I am able to use them, but this mission is unsanctioned. So you see, Shou-sa—”

“Okay, I get it! So you’re just not allowed,” he sneers the last word. “God, you’re pathetic.”

Mob says nothing. A gust of wind blows a fine mist of precipitation into his face. After a pause that turns from expectant to stewing to deliberating, Shou-san continues.

“It feels weird having you call me ‘-san’ all the time. Quit being such a weirdo and cut that shit out. Just Shou is fine, it’s creepy when you talk like we aren’t both kids.”

“But that’s a breach of protocol…”

“Well this is a new protocol, and a direct order! Call me Shou or else, got it?”

“Yes… Shou.”

“Alright then, come along if you’re gonna,” Shou says with a roll of his eyes, “Freakin’ doormat…” he scoffs under his breath as they set off again, walking side-by-side along the slick cobblestone road.

Mob tastes the new name in his head, and though he wouldn’t presume to articulate feeling this way about a superior... he wonders what’s it’s like to have a friend.

Day 2743

Mob has absolutely no idea how to react when a call of “Mob-sempai!” booms out from behind him. It takes him a second to register the actual words because they are so counter to anything he has come to expect from his life.

Flabbergasted and feeling an unfamiliar blush cross his face, Mob turns to find a scruffy man with an umbrella and a big smile standing over him.

“Who…?” is all he can manage faced with such enthusiasm. Judging by the heat emanating from his cheeks, Mob’s face is a deep red. The sensation is unsettling and unfamiliar; he resists the urge to tug at his clothes.

“Serizawa Katsuya! The President told me about you, Mob-sempai! He said you’ve been part of the organization for ages, and he called you a ‘real asset’. I hope we can work well together!”

Mob blinks and recognizes that there’s been some sort of mistake. Asset is his title, not a character recommendation. He opens his mouth to correct the man—too slow.

“This is exciting, I haven’t been around this many people in years! Decades even!”

Serizawa Katsuya clutches his umbrella in white-knuckled fists as his eyes take on a frantic look. He looks like how Mob doesn’t allow himself to feel when the world gets to be too much.

“But I’ll leave you to your work, Mob-sempai, I really just came to introduce myself. In fact, I think I should really go find the President right away, don’t want to slack off on my first day, haha!”

“Haha,” Mob echoes vacantly. This conversation has overcome his oddness threshold; Mob disengages and defaults to following the other man’s lead.

“Heh,” Serizawa parrots back. Mob wonders how long this can possibly go on.

They stare sweatily at each other for a few fraught moments, then Serizawa blurts a “bye!” and hurtles away from Mob back down the hallway. Mob, stunned, ends up standing there for almost five minutes.

His face is still glowing when he goes back to work.

Day 3634

Mob lands late in Chubu International Airport and wavers a little as he collects his bag. He was in Honolulu before he had to fly to Japan and the lengthy flight has left him feeling like the last piece of lettuce in the box, wilted and crumpled, worn sticky around the edges.

That phase of his transit is over now though, and Mob can look forward to a nice long train ride to Seasoning City before he has to make his way to the 7th Branch. The three hours to Seasoning will give him time to rest and to consider his mission parameters. He received the briefing shortly before boarding almost nine hours ago, but reading on planes makes him nauseous. He forced himself through the first page until he learned his current mission is non-urgent, then gratefully set the packet aside for the remainder of the flight.

The lateness of the hour leaves him alone in the train car, and Mob settles into his cushioned seat to read.

His mission is twofold: first, to disband a cult that has caused 7th Branch Head-san to send many reports that the people at HQ find troublesome; second, to keep an eye on Shou. The latter is admittedly just as much a personal desire as an assignment from Boss, and Mob wonders what Shou has been up to lately—if he’s dressing properly for the weather, if he’s been getting along with his friends. When he last saw his mother. When he last fought with his father.

He spares a thought for Serizawa, faithfully helping Boss on an undisclosed mission somewhere icy and cold. Mob hopes they’re warm.

After a little while, the soothing rock of the train lulls Mob into unconsciousness. The briefing slumps in his lap and when he wakes later his hair will be mussed all up one side from the window. He sleeps right through his stop.

Day 1

The boy wakes up in an unfamiliar room and is immediately distracted by an irritating pressure low on his right leg. Looking down, he sees one of his knee socks has sagged into a wad of fabric around his ankle. The feeling is uncomfortable; he pulls it back up and straightens the other sock for good measure. He smooths down his blue smock and—pleased with his restored tidiness—he doesn’t think to wonder where he is until the last wispy shreds of his memories have already evaporated away. He doesn’t remember what he’s lost for a very long time.

Day 3789

Ten years, four months, and thirteen days later, he does.

dmtasd series masterpost

[minusram]

POLICE SKEPTICAL OF ESP EXCUSE, IS A SERIAL ABDUCTOR ON THE LOOSE?

The simultaneous disappearance of five unrelated Seasoning City middle schoolers left police puzzled and parents shocked, but a recent tip led the investigation to a hidden connection: one Mitsuura Kenji, a young businessman based downtown. Despite that, new information reveals this will not be the big break hoped for in a case that has been gaining notoriety in conspiracy circles.

Mitsuura’s account details a harrowing tale of supernatural intrigue; some items of note are the mysterious man who battered his staff into unconsciousness with a pair of psychically manifested whips and the true purpose of his remodelled apartment building. Mitsuura’s testimony, a transcript (link) of which was leaked late last night online, has encouraged a faction of conspiracy theorists who believe a secret society of espers stalks Seasoning City’s streets kidnapping children. However the frankly incredible story does not seem to hold much water with Seasoning Youth Division officers.

The children have now been missing for two weeks. This makes twelve open cases of this nature involving minors in the past ten years, continuing a grim trend of child disappearances in Seasoning. The Youth Division Representative of the Seasoning Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the possibility of a serial child abductor.

Another trigger which has led to increased activity on conspiracy message boards is the tenth anniversary of a family’s tragic loss. This Sunday will mark a decade since the youngest victim thought to be part of the pattern vanished from his kindergarten at just four years old. Presumed dead but survived by his parents and younger brother, the boy’s unsolved disappearance—along with other such open cases—stoked the fires of the group.

Despite the conspiracy theorists’ outlandish beliefs, they do in their own way care for the missing children of this city. Three years ago, the online community members organized a fundraising campaign to refurbish the shrine marking a preteen’s disappearance. Next week, they plan to put posters up asking for anyone with information on their pet cases to step forward. Hopefully, the efforts of the police will preclude their further involvement in the current missing persons case.

*If you or someone you know sees any suspicious activity, please report it to your local police station. Be aware of lone adults or suspicious vehicles in children’s areas like playgrounds and schoolyards. Stay vigilant, our children are counting on you to protect them.*

series: do make tomorrow a sunny day

////edit: retconned!! canon version is on ao3 ///edit2: the two versions is confusing actually, so i’m gonna fix this one. canon again!

[minusram]

LOCAL CHILDREN STILL MISSING, LOCAL CRACKPOT SUSPECTED A new lead has been found regarding the disappearance of five Seasoning City preteens, police report. The middle schoolers, four boys and one girl, were last seen leaving their respective schools. Coming from different school districts and economic statuses, these missing minors were believed to be unconnected cases. Interviews with their families seemed to support that conclusion, but recent witness reports reveal they were often seen going into and out of a remodelled apartment building downtown. Mitsuura Kenji, the proprietor of the building and an eccentric man of wealth, was taken in for questioning by the Seasoning Metropolitan Police yesterday evening.

series: do make tomorrow a sunny day

[minusram]

bonny and blithe, good and gay

The first Ritsu hears of the new transfer student, he's at the student council meeting trying to deal with a complaint slip that for once hasn’t been instigated by the council itself.

According to the complaint, some sort of cult has infiltrated the student body to the point where it is disrupting class. Ritsu is skeptical of the claim; there can’t possibly be anything that wrong with laughter. It might even be nice to get the mood of Salt Mid up a little—ever since the cleanup initiative the school has lost some of its cheerfulness. Ritsu has found fewer and fewer genuine smiles lately.

The president mentions that there is a new boy in the second year class and that the council should welcome him as ambassadors of the school. Ritsu resolves to do so if the opportunity arises but wonders why the president is making a point of bringing it up.

---

That night, he eats with his parents. They share a quiet meal and Ritsu does the dishes. After dinner, he sits in front of the family altar and tells Nii-san about his day. Then he goes to bed.

---

The second time he hears about the new student, it’s a few days later. He is passing two second year girls in the hallway. They wave at him as usual, and then continue their whispered conversation. Ritsu, who for the most part has regretted overhearing that sort of giggly exchange in the past, tries his best not to listen. He hears anyway.

"Did you see that new boy? He's so stoic, just like a lord from an old film!"

"I know! He's so austere~ it kind of makes me want to ruffle him up a bit..."

"Hikari!" The other one exclaims at full volume, playfully scandalized as they turn the corner.

Ritsu wonders what exactly an old lord is supposed to look like.

---

When he gets home, the house is dark. Reading the note his mother left him, he learns that his father will have to work late. His mother is out to dinner with her friends; an event that was planned three weeks ago. Ritsu reheats the food he finds in the microwave and eats at the table while he reads a book. After he’s done, he washes the dish he used. He washes the spoon and places it back in the drawer with the others. Then he goes to the family altar and tells Nii-san about his day.

---

Rumours and gossip continue to spread across the school. Ritsu hears about the new student's striking colouring, his humble manner, his vast fortune. Ritsu hears about his exotic international upbringing—they say his family has moved around since he was a baby, they say he speaks five languages—and most strangely his delicate eyelashes. The girls are very fond of his eyelashes.

But the first time Ritsu actually sees the transfer student, the boy is getting into an intimidatingly shiny black car. Ritsu just catches a fan of inky black hair and then the door—with its tinted windows—closes behind him. It seems he leaves right after school every day. Rumour has it the clubs are all very disappointed, and people say he has a job as the CEO of a company or something similarly important and unsuited to a middle schooler.

Ritsu watches the car smoothly pull away and wonders if he ever would have seen his mysterious upperclassman if student council weren't cancelled.

---

After his almost-encounter with the transfer student, Ritsu has some time to kill. Though there’s no student council meeting, it’s a work day; that means even if he went home he would have to go out again almost immediately. He spends the extra time on a park bench reading a book, unwilling to submit himself to his feckless employer's attention any longer than necessary.

Being the recipient of some mild psychic powers is convenient in many ways, but the only way he's discovered to become the recipient of greater psychic powers is to train them. Unfortunately, Ritsu does not have time to go wandering around the city every afternoon looking for spirits to exorcise. Thus he has been forced to resort to extreme measures. If he wants to see any progress, he must make nice with a despicable conman who nonetheless manages to attract clients with real otherworldly problems.

When it’s time to go, Ritsu packs his book neatly back in his bag and walks to the rundown office of his useless employer. Despite the man's annoyingly effective brand of sleazy charm, Ritsu saw through Reigen Arataka the first time they met. The man has less than zero psychic presence and no real psychic would solve spiritual problems with beauty treatments and cleaning products. Not to mention his completely fraudulent 'spirit sense'. For as long as Ritsu has known him Reigen has been surrounded by ghosts, yet the sham has never given any indication of noticing.

For some reason—possibly the dubious honour of being the cheapest psychic in the phone book, or maybe his theatrical way of dealing with the weak-minded—Reigen gets a semi-regular stream of desperate people willing to pay him for what amounts to little more than table salt served with a smile. But if a client has real problems Reigen will schedule an appointment with them for one of the two days a week Ritsu dedicates to spiritual exercise. In return, Ritsu allows Reigen’s business to profit from his efforts. They split the money.

Sometimes the two of them make house calls, but often the clients carry their unearthly burdens with them. Today, three people wait in the scummy office when Ritsu arrives. He ignores his employer’s overblown performance and channels his disgust back into his powers. He banishes all three supernatural ailments with one wave of his hand. He stifles the sneer that curls his lip at the lack of challenge and waits by the window for the weak people Reigen preys upon to finish throwing their money at a man who would just as soon rip them off as help them.

When the grateful clients have been gently ushered out, Reigen shuts the door and leans against it for a moment. Then he spins around and smiles blindingly.

“Well! Nice work, Ritsu!” He leans forward where he stands on the other side of the room and stage whispers, a hand in his pocket and the other held up to his face, “Hey, maybe you should come be my assistant more often. Old ladies like them think you’re pretty charming, you know! If you butter them up, you might even get some candy.”

“Reigen-san, please call me Kageyama. I have shared my preference with you before. And I am not your assistant,” Ritsu counters smoothly. His shoulders are loose and relaxed, but the fingers of his right hand twitch once where they are hidden behind his leg.

“Alright, Kageyama-kun then. Geez kid, lighten up, huh?” Reigen says as he counts out the money.

He hands half to Ritsu with a habitual little flourish. Ritsu takes it sedately and puts it in his bookbag. He knows his share is all there; that, at least, is one thing that’s never been an issue between them. As he turns to go, Reigen calls out from behind him.

“Why not stick around a little while? You’re always so tense, and you rush out of here like someone’s after you. You like pork, right? We can get dinner, my treat,” Reigen sits behind his desk as his hand flails around on the end of his wrist like an animal caught in a trap, “Just saying, kid, it might not be a bad idea to take some time to relax for once.”

“Pardon me, Reigen-san, but I highly doubt I’ll be able to relax if I have to breathe the cloud of cigarette smoke you tend to cloak yourself in at the first opportunity,” Ritsu says.

“Ritsu, If you were half as observant as you thought you were then I wouldn’t be so worried about you,” Reigen says, face flat, “But okay, if you’re going to be prickly then I won’t keep you.”

His hand flaps, shooing Ritsu out the door, and Ritsu turns again to go. As he strides down the hallway away from the office, nothing pursues him but Reigen’s voice.

“See you next week!”

---

Ritsu gets home late to dinner already in progress. He sits down to eat without acknowledging the faintly concerned looks on his parents’ faces. Once he has food on his plate, he speaks.

“Work ran a bit late today. I’m sorry if you were worried.”

His parents smile at him, reassured, and return to their conversation. They would be devastated if anything happened to him.

After dinner, Ritsu does the dishes. He does some studying. He sits in his room and stares at the wall, his hands listless on the table in front of him. Then he goes to the family altar, and tells Nii-san about his day.

---

“Am I a good person, Nii-san? If you were here, what would you say? We were together for such a short time. I barely remember you, but I’ve been talking to you my whole life! Is it selfish of me to trouble you like this? Are you tired of hearing about the little brother you left behind? What would my life be like if you were still around for me to turn to?

“Shigeo-nii, were you a psychic too?”

---

Ritsu meets the transfer student unexpectedly. He is turning a corner when suddenly someone comes around from the other direction. They collide. Ritsu barely manages to keep hold of his papers and takes a step backwards to recover from the impact. Meanwhile, his assailant has hit the floor in a supremely undignified position, legs askew and face pressed to the ground. It’s lunchtime, and the boy’s bread lies near his strangely arranged body. Ritsu doesn’t recognize him, but he’s wearing the black uniform of Salt Middle School and as the boy looks up with a slightly dazed look on his face, Ritsu is sure he knows who he is.

The transfer student, and that’s obviously who lies in front of him, has a rather plain face but his skin is so pale he almost blends into the floor tiles. His eyes are some of the darkest Ritsu has ever seen, and the stark contrast in colouring between his face and his hair and uniform certainly helped Ritsu identify him. But as the somewhat gawky upperclassman picks himself up from the ground Ritsu remains stunned, staring at the boy as his hands clench tighter around the papers he’s carrying. He does not offer to help or apologize when the transfer student is finally upright and brushing himself off with limp limbs. He can’t do anything.

In front of him stands the strongest source of psychic power he has ever felt, someone so much stronger than him he can’t even quantify the difference. He only felt it for an instant, but even now he can still sense wisps of power curling around the boy standing across from him. It’s terrifying. He’s never felt anything like it.

Ritsu remains petrified until the boy’s placid eyes blink and the transfer student bows in apology.

“I’m very sorry,” he says with vague dismay, “I didn’t realize you were there. Are you okay?”

The spell breaks. “I’m fine, fine!” Ritsu hurries to say, appalled at his rudeness but still wary, “I’m really sorry, senpai, I wasn’t looking where I was going. I’m Kageyama Ritsu, a member of the student council.”

“Ah, you must be a first year!” the boy says mildly. He has recaptured the bread, and it hangs from his fingers like a dead thing. His smooth cap of dark hair falls gently back into place as he rises from his bow. Ritsu wonders what kind of monster he is.

“I’m Suzuki Mob. It’s nice to meet you.”

[part 2 here]

series: do make tomorrow a sunny day

so this is a tumblr repost! i’m thinking of mayyyybe continuing this, but i don’t want to promise anything.///edit: dude there is like a bunch of this now

i welcome any feedback. thanks for reading!