Chapter Text
'That's stupid.'
Hasebe has regrets.
This isn’t new or news in and of itself, but he’s added new regrets to his growing list of them, a list he’s sure has at least tripled in size since moving in with Mitsutada and company. One of them presently is having told Souza about his latest regret, whose reaction is probably one he ought to have expected and one he definitely agrees with, but the text makes him groan anyway. It is stupid, but it has to be done.
Though telling Souza is something he regrets in itself, the regret in question is, as expected, having said he would prove that Mitsutada wasn't cursed. The second is having said this in front of Tsuru. By the end of the day where he had boldly and stupidly proclaimed this, he regrets it, mostly due to a slew of texts from Tsuru while he’s at work enquiring about what his plans are, how he expects to prove it and, worst of all, suggestions as to how he could go about it.
All of them are, much like the suggestions he had made in the morning in his actual presence, absolutely awful . It's only by some miracle that he manages to finish work without Ookurikara being kidnapped in some wild scheme of Tsuru’s and he manages to convince the menace that tomorrow evening is when it’s all going to happen. He doesn’t tell him what will happen, mostly because he know yet. He doesn’t have any insane or dramatic plans but somehow manages to stop Tsuru asking about the plan by telling him it will be a surprise.
The most surprising part of all is that saying this actually does stop Tsuru asking, and that he receives no text messages about it at work the next day. Not from Tsuru, anyway. Souza is another matter entirely.
'Remind me why you're getting involved in this again?'
'Because I've already been dragged into it and intervening is less painful than watching this continue.'
In reminding Souza he has to remind himself, or convince himself of the same. He's been watching this play out for too long already. If someone doesn't intervene, or at least someone who isn't insane, he's going to be watching it until the end of time.
‘Is it really though?’
‘Probably.’
Tsuru is waiting for him when he gets home, but that’s to be expected. He’s almost suspiciously dutiful and obedient as Hasebe gives him instructions to collect the kittens scattered throughout the house so Hasebe can get to work.
"So? What's the surprise?"
"You'll find out."
Come this point, he's come up with what the surprise is. The surprise is meant to be that it’s completely easy and not surprising at all. No kidnapping or other weird ploys that could get them arrested at best and killed at worst. It’s a simple plan that involves leaving the two of them alone in the living room, distractions removed, with Mitsutada aware that they’re leaving them alone so he can make a move. That’s it.
It’s an easy, perfect set-up, and with the spice rack of kittens locked away in his bedroom upstairs and Tsuru in his custody, Hasebe can't think of a single way this can go wrong.
"It's time," he tells Mitsutada, who frowns at him. "The kittens have been wrangled. He's in the living room. Go ask him out."
"But…" Mitsu starts.
"Just trust me. Go."
Mitsutada does go to the living room and sits himself down beside an unflinching Ookurikara. He and Tsuru linger in the hallway, just hidden out of sight, but able to hear inside nonetheless.
"Do you think he's brave enough to do it?" Tsuru whispers unhelpfully, giving him a single idea for what could go wrong. It probably won't go wrong, unless Mitsutada chickens out. "Ah, and Kuri is easily distracted." …or if Ookurikara does something stupid like upending his glass of cola over himself. The latter might not even be that much of a hindrance. Probably.
In hindsight maybe he should have confiscated any drinks first, or anything else that could be spilled. And given Mitsutada a script.
There’s little that could possibly go wrong. It’s probably because he has this thought that fate decides to conspire against him for his arrogance, his hubris, to punish him. Without warning, the lights go out.
Mitsutada makes a vaguely confused sound, while there's a vague clinking of something against glass, followed by Ookurikara swearing. In spite of being cast into near absolute darkness, Hasebe looks to Tsuru, who is little more than a vague silhouette.
"Is this the surprise?" Tsuru asks without missing a beat. "No mood lighting? Bold move."
“Did you do that?”
“I’ve been standing beside you this entire time.”
“That’s not a yes or a no.”
“I love that you think I’m powerful enough to do that,” Tsuru admits. This isn’t a yes or a no either. Hasebe waits. Tsuru elaborates; “no.”
If Tsuru is to be believed, which Hasebe isn’t wholly convinced he should be, then the power cut is so terribly inconveniently timed as to be deeply suspicious at worst and hugely unfortunate at best.
“Cursed,” Tsuru whispers beside him.
“ Unlucky ,” Hasebe insists. He doesn’t know if he means this for himself or Mitsutada. Maybe it’s both.
“Guys?” Mitsutada calls instead of making a move in the dark and Hasebe groans. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know ,” he admits as Tsuru moves down the hall to open the front door. “Did we trip a switch or something?”
“The whole street is out,” Tsuru merrily informs them. “Looks like a power cut.”
There’s movement in the living room, followed by Mitsutada starting to speak, with a;
“Ah, wait, I-
“I need to go get changed,” Ookurikara interrupts. “Urgently.”
“You upended your drink onto your lap, didn’t you?” Hasebe asks, monotone, massaging his temples as he starts to feel a stress headache coming on.
“Shut up,” Ookurikara confirms for him, lighting up his own face in the dark with the screen of his phone. “Go find candles or glow sticks or something.”
“Why would we just have glow sticks lying around?” Hasebe asks aloud, before immediately realising exactly why, with the sound of a crack and a pink glow coming from Tsuru's direction. Really, it would be impressive how he had so much random stuff on him at all times if he didn’t think it was both suspicious and annoying in equal measure.
As Ookurikara escapes both the room and Mitsutada’s latest efforts to ask him out, Hasebe decides to let the glowsticks go without comment as he resolves to go find candles and maybe some aspirin for his up and coming headache.
He’s scarcely managed to light the candles on the coffee table when the trouble begins. He can’t say when Tsuru raided the laundry room and pilfered the clean towels hidden within to fashion himself a turban and make-shift robe, only that he has. Neither can Mitsutada, who is mostly reminded of how Tsuru currently resembles how he looked that one time he had burst into his room to question him, only minus the novelty sunglasses. Ookurikara wouldn’t be able to pinpoint when any of this happened either, which is particularly odd when he had also been to the laundry room to get changed out of his cola soaked trousers but he’s also trying to pretend he hasn’t noticed and doesn’t care, in the hopes of not getting involved in whatever Tsuru might be plotting.
Whatever his intentions, Tsuru slaps down what looks to be a game board on the coffee table without a word of explanation. As he rearranges the candles around it in ominous silence, it takes everyone else in the room a moment to adjust to the dim lighting enough to decipher what has been laid out in front of them.
“Tsuru,” Mitsutada addresses politely. “What is...”
Hasebe is less polite and more direct as he asks;
“Is that a ouija board?”
“Come,” Tsuru says by way of reply. “Let us gather around the table.”
“Why do you even have that?”
“All of your questions will be answered in due time,” Tsuru assures him. Hasebe highly doubts it. “Come, sit.”
“No,” Hasebe flat out refuses, while Mitsutada slowly slips from the couch to the floor to obey the towel-headed-menace, while Ookurikara follows suit with an audible sigh, leaving only Hasebe and Tsuru still standing. “ No , we are not doing this.”
“It’s not like we have much else to do,” Mitsutada says, though he doesn’t sound particularly convinced of the same. “It might help us pass the time?”
“Yes, we do,” Hasebe argues. “We could do literally anything else.”
“ Hasebe !” Tsuru gasps a little too dramatically for Hasebe’s liking. “Are you... afraid of ghosts ?”
“What? No , I-"
“He's afraid,” Ookurikara says, backing up Tsuru in a move that feels like a betrayal of sorts, even though Hasebe wasn’t expecting anything in the way of back-up from him or Mitsutada in the first place.
“No need to fear,” Tsuru assures him, sitting down in front of the coffee table and Hasebe feels thoroughly unassured. “I, guru Tsuru, will be your spiritual guide on this darkest of nights!”
Whatever complaints and protests Hasebe has, all three of them who are sitting around the table look at him expectantly.
“No,” he repeats again. His protests fall on deaf ears and unflinchingly expectant expressions. “ No .”
“Just sit down,” Ookurikara says, in a tone that makes it sound like he'd very much like to get this over and done with as quickly as possible, and that he’s accepted that playing along is the fastest way to achieve this. He’s probably not wrong either. Fighting against Tsuru is always a fruitless endeavour. He deliberates for a few seconds longer, in which all three of them stare at him and Tsuru begins to pat an untaken spot of floor, waggling his eyebrows suggestively and making it feel particularly uninviting. Hasebe groans deeply.
“ Fine ,” he relents at last, moving to join them all in being seated on the floor around the coffee table. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Excellent,” Tsuru grins, before extending his hands out either side of him. “Now, let us begin. Join hands, please.”
Hasebe would rather not, but gingerly takes Tsuru's hand on one side, and Ookurikara’s on the other, flinching upon touching the latter.
“Your hand is sticky ,” he complains.
“Good.” Ookurikara is unflinching and unapologetic both. Mitsutada doesn’t appear to be particularly put out by Ookurikara’s sticky cola hands and Hasebe has to bite back further complaints for the sake of getting this over with. Tsuru doesn’t continue until Ookurikara’s hand is firmly stuck in his own.
“Friends,” Tsuru begins solemnly. “We are gathered here today-"
“Don’t make this sound like a funeral,” Hasebe interrupts.
“I thought that was how they open at weddings,” Mitsutada thinks aloud. “Rather than funerals?”
“Spirits are dead,” Tsuru counters, "Funeral sounds more fitting."
“Can’t it be both?” Ookurikara sighs, and Tsuru seems to give this a moment of consideration.
“Both is good,” he decides. “So anyway, we’re here to summon a spirit to answer our questions, maybe the spirit of someone who died at a wedding or-"
“Was it their own wedding?” Mitsutada asks with a frown. “How sad.”
“It could be,” Tsuru replies, and Hasebe feels his own will to live waning fast. “A tragedy.”
The whole evening is something of a tragedy unfolding before them. Before anyone can point this out, Tsuru continues.
“Oh spirits ,” he calls. “We call unto thee! If you can hear us, give us a sign !”
For a moment, there is nothing but stillness and silence. Then, slowly but surely, the coffee table begins to shake. So do Tsuru's legs, folded up beneath it; causation in action.
“Damnit Tsuru,” Hasebe hisses. “Stop shaking the table!”
“The spirits ,” Tsuru gasps. “They’re here , among us!”
There’s an evil spirit in this room shaking the table, yes, but there’s only one, it has a very physical form, a towel on its head and it’s definitely Tsuru.
“Your knee keeps hitting me!”
“Look! ” Tsuru insists to distract from this, freeing his hand from Hasebe’s hold to place it on the inevitably moving piece on the board. “Quick, everyone place a hand on the pointer!”
Everyone does so, and immediately they can all feel a pull from it. Tsuru gasps a little too dramatically for Hasebe’s liking.
“It’s starting to spell something!”
“You ,” Hasebe corrects. “ You’re starting to spell something.”
“C,”Tsuru calls out, ignoring Hasebe. “It’s on the move again! U...”
“R,” Ookurikara calls unenthusiastically.
“S.”
“E...?” Mitsutada says nervously. Hasebe is pretty sure he can feel the other starting to sweat from across the table. “C-curse...?”
“D,” Hasebe calls before the cursor even reaches the next letter, with his patience already near breaking point. “ Cursed . We get it Tsuru, stop playing around.”
“Spirits ,” Tsuru whispers ominously once more. “One of us here is-"
“Doomed,” Ookurikara suggests.
“Cursed,” Mitsutada groans.
“No, they’re not ,” Hasebe insists in the midst of Mitsutada's rapidly spiralling mental state. “This stops right now !”
It’s the moment he finishes his sentence that the lights come back on alongside a myriad of sounds, the whirring and beeping of various electrical contraptions and appliances as they begin to turn back on. These, for a few confused seconds, are the only sounds in the house as everyone looks around in confusion, before looking to Hasebe in varying degrees of suspicion and unease.
It's another case of suspiciously bad timing, and either the universe is determined to undermine him today, or Tsuru is completely responsible for the power cut. He’s leaning more towards the latter.
“Well, that killed two minutes,” Ookurikara declares, rising from the floor, snatching his hands back from the grasp of his neighbours. Mitsutada reaches after him with a frown, unnoticed as he continues with; “I need a shower.”
“Ah, wait, I was-"
“I’m sticky,” he reminds Mitsutada, and assuming he was about to say he was also intending to take a shower, he generously and selflessly continues with; “I’m going first.”
It’s a tragedy that has nothing to do with weddings or funerals and everything to do with Ookurikara’s personality. As Ookurikara beats a hasty retreat upstairs, Mitsutada sighs wistfully after him and while Hasebe has no idea what he sees in the other, he feels bad for him nonetheless. Towel still on his head, he spies Tsuru licking his thumb and index finger before pinching one of the candles out.
"That was unfortunate,” he says a bit too merrily for Hasebe to not suspect him of something or other.
“I’m cursed ,” Mitsutada groans. “I told you, something happens every time I try.”
“You’re not cursed,” Hasebe insists for the umpteenth time. “Just unlucky.”
“Bad luck is a kind of curse.”
It’s more likely that Mitsutada’s polite nature is a curse, wherein he won’t just push through the unfortunate occurrences and just ask him anyway, cow saliva or cola accidents be damned. Not that it’s entirely on him; Ookurikara could stand to be significantly less difficult and dense both.
“Anyway ,” Hasebe gives up trying to persuade Mitsutada and instead directs his attention to Tsuru, gesturing towards the table and ouija board both. “How was this supposed to help?”
“Well, if the lights hadn’t come back on when they did, the spirits were gonna say that Kara-chan's kiss would break the curse.”
Hasebe isn’t convinced they were, or that it would have worked if they did, moreso for the fact that Mitsutada frowns and replies to this statement with;
“Wait, how do you know that?”
“Psychic powers,” Tsuru replies without missing a beat, and Mitsutada accepts this answer, leading Hasebe to suspect he’s far too distracted by the fact that he’s failed to ask Ookurikara out a fourth time for his common sense to not be kicking in.
A sudden pitter-patter on the stairs suggests that Ookurikara has freed the kittens on his way to the shower, further ruining all of the efforts made towards helping to set him and Mitsutada up. As his phone buzzes and a ‘ so how’s that going for you? ’ from Souza lights up his screen, he briefly wonders if maybe Tsuru was onto something with the kidnapping thing after all.
“So?” Tsuru says, as if he can sense this thought, looking over at him with an unfortunate air of expectancy. “What’s our next plan?”
“What do you mean ‘our’?” Hasebe asks, where he really should have first asked; “For what?”
“I can call in reinforcements,” Tsuru offers, and though he has a lot of questions as to whether this means Sada, a team of kidnappers or something else entirely, Hasebe decides not to ask any questions and instead intends to shoot this offer down immediately lest his morbid curiosity be misconstrued as interest or giving him the go-ahead. Before he can open his mouth to do so, someone else beats him to it;
“It’s okay, Tsuru,” Mitsutada sighs. “Not today.”
“Tomorrow?” Tsuru suggests instead. “I’m flexible. In a related and also not related kind of way.”
“We’ll… review that tomorrow,” Mitsutada replies tactfully. “I think tonight I’m just going to go shower-”
“Ohh, joining him in the shower, bold!”
“- after Kara-chan is out, and-”
“Less bold.”
“-then call it a night.”
“Not bold at all,” Tsuru concludes after Mitsutada does. Hasebe thinks he’s going to press the issue and finds himself surprised when he instead shrugs. “If you’re sure.”
Mitsutada gets up and leaves the room without further ado, while Tsuru half-heartedly begins to clear up the candles and ouija board from the table. It’s only at this point that Hasebe remembers the phone in his hand and belatedly replies to Souza;
‘It’s not going well.’