Archive of Our Own ^beta

The night before it starts, Reigen has a dream that doesn’t feel like a dream.

Its contents are rather boring, in that all that happens is the sort of thing Reigen does every day. He wakes up early, out of an inability to sleep restfully rather than any actual choice, and scrapes himself out of bed and into his suit and tie. The apartment is silent save for the creak of the floor where he walks. He lingers in his kitchen, watching the street out his narrow window into the world outside. Reigen leans into the crook of his elbow as he smokes a cigarette. He’ll quit tomorrow. For real, this time. Then he walks out of the apartment, flicking the cigarette into an ashtray before pulling the door shut after him. And after that it’s just the walk to work, then work, and then back to the apartment.

The difference arises from his apartment, and the street, and everything besides Reigen. Reigen’s apartment is cheap and dusty and something is always broken. This apartment— his apartment, he thinks— is decaying. Or maybe it is decayed— Reigen doesn’t know when the process is considered finished. Handles turn to ash when he touches them, cracks spread across the wall in long, ugly patterns. The smell is of something rotting. When he flips the light, it comes on, but it’s a distorted thing that Reigen turns off again because he knows it should upset him in its strangeness. The shadows are too big and black. 

The street isn’t better. Reigen can already see, before he walks outside, that it’s empty. Even early in the morning cars move along its length, like fast moving ants to destinations Reigen doesn’t know. Here there’s nothing. Not another person exists in the world. When he goes outside, the buildings are crumbling. It’s like nobody’s been alive for years. The sky is black. Reigen doesn’t bother to check the time— he knows this is when he goes to work. 

On telephone poles, hundreds of crows watch him as he walks. Or maybe ravens. Reigen doesn’t know the difference. They are a huge dark smog, somehow distinct from the shadow of the sky.

It’s not til Reigen wakes up suddenly, during the motion of this completely empty day, that he realizes that there was anything wrong at all. He lies in the usual dinginess of his apartment, blinking at the sunlight filtering in as a car alarm blares outside.

While Reigen is standing at an intersection, waiting for the light to change or for the flow of cars to slow, the man appears.

Appear is maybe not the right word, Reigen decides as he eyes the man— maybe he’s been there the whole time. Maybe Reigen is the newcomer and he somehow didn’t notice the man before. It might be because the man is so still, but it surprises Reigen that he didn’t see him. He seems suddenly unmissable now that Reigen is looking at him. Taller than Reigen, with lank black hair that scrapes his chin. Everything about him is angled and solid, like someone cut him plane by plane out of grey stone. Reigen can’t quite see his eyes. 

“You are a psychic,” the man says, eventually. 

It’s not a question. “Yes,” Reigen says anyway. “Twenty-first century’s greatest.” The case of business cards, freshly printed and awaiting an excuse for presenting, burn in the breast pocket over his heart. Reigen doesn’t reach for them. 

The man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the statement. “I have always wondered about the slogan,” he began.

Reigen doesn’t let him finish— he flaps a hand, a wrist snapping motion that’s intended to arrest the man’s attention. “Saying slogan,” he says, in a huge, room filling tone, even though they’re outside and the room is impossible to fill, “makes it seem like it’s nothing more than something pithy than to attract customers. It’s not. It’s an expression of intent.”

He considers. Reigen watches his forehead crease as he does it. “So you’re saying you will be the twenty-first century’s psychic,” the man says eventually.

“Was, is, will be,” Reigen says. “It’s really more about the feeling of it than anything else. What it inspires, which is feelings of greatness. And confidence— in client, employer, employee.”

Something about this makes the man laugh, rich enough for Reigen to feel that what he said must actually have been funny and he must have meant it to be. “This is a long century,” the man says. “If you intend to be the greatest, Reigen, I wish you luck.” 

The light changes, signaling the conversation’s end, and the man is gone. Reigen doesn’t know how he misses the departure. It must have occurred while Reigen was watching, but it’s like the man simply vanished into thin air. Before he can stop to ponder on it, Reigen’s legs automatically move to cross the street away from the spot where the man had been.

After he’s made it past several more intersections without stopping, Reigen realizes that he never gave the man his name. He knew it, anyway— as well as the slogan for Reigen’s whole business. There must be some sort of reason for it. Maybe they’ve met before. As Reigen walks, he becomes more and more certain— he’s seen the man before.

People pass in and out of the office door like it revolves. Reigen is on his feet all day, lecturing clients about the ghosts clinging to their shoulder, the special deals he can cut just for them, and the benefits of a good massage, spiritual and otherwise. 

When Mob walks through the door, Reigen is enjoying a brief moment of respite. His feet stay propped up on the desk as he flexes his toes inside his shoes. He can feel where the leather is worn. “Oi, Mob,” he says, raising an arm. “I’m making a killing today. We’re making a killing today. You might even get a bonus.” Reigen straightens his arm out and brings the other one up to meet it over his head. His shoulder pops, satisfying and loud. 

“Shishou,” Mob says, without acknowledgement of any of these points, “there’s a bug.”

He’s pointing at a place on Reigen’s desk. His shoe. Next to his shoe. Suddenly obvious is the the huge bug seconds away from crawling over Reigen’s ankle in methodical, too many legged steps. Reigen makes a noise that in some circles could be construed as undignified and shoves away from the desk, legs pinwheeling in the air before slamming down on the floor. The chair clatters to the floor behind him. The bug isn’t on the desk anymore. “Where—” Reigen runs his hands over his jacket, until considering the possibility that he could actually make contact with a bug. He yanks his hands up in a surrender. “Mob, where did it—”

“Here,” Mob says, pointing in air. The bug is floating above him, not flying. There’s a vague shimmer in the air around it, like heat rising up from sun soaked concrete. Its legs wiggle in panic as Mob makes it drift down and he catches it in his palms.

Reigen clears his throat, one hand coming to rest on his chin and the other behind his back. “Right,” he says. “I trust you know what to do with… That creature.” He’s not sure what kind of bug it is, even— maybe it better qualifies as an insect. As he watches Mob carry the bug out the door and shoo it off his hand onto the ground, Reigen can’t really bring himself to care. He wonders, vaguely, how he missed it on the desk. It’s like it was just there, suddenly.

“What are we doing today?” Mob asks, when the door is shut safely behind him, and suddenly the thought is gone. Reigen flicks his wrists out again, already launching into their unusually extensive client list as he begins pacing in usual circuitous patterns. His desk chair, he discovers as he comes around the back of the desk, is upended, like he knocked it over while abruptly coming to his feet. Reigen can’t remember why that would be. 

The man is there again, after Reigen takes Mob out for a triumphant dinner and walks him to their usual departure point. Red is spilling over the clouds in the sky, staining everything orange. Reigen waves at Mob as he walks away, his tread ponderous as always. 

Then, when he’s out of view, Reigen turns to the man. He is somehow unsurprised by his presence, even though he had not been there when Reigen had last looked. 

“Business is good in this city for a psychic,” the man notes. 

Reigen’s pockets feel unusually heavy, even though all of the money gained is locked in the safe deposit box back at the office. The imagined weight of it still centers him, makes his chest feel bright. “It’s something to do with the city’s energy,” Reigen told him, raising a hand in declaration. “Psychics come here, it makes ghosts powerful, that attracts more psychics which makes the ghosts more powerful…” His hand, which had been looping on his wrist with each articulated point, slowed with his words. “A feedback loop of sorts.”

His feet scrape pointlessly against the ground before Reigen stops in place again. He’s not sure, suddenly, of whether to move. Will the man follow? Does Reigen want him to? The man makes no motion, besides a slight incline of his head. “And is that why you’re here?” He asks.

The reason Reigen is at Seasoning City is long and unconnected to Spirits and Such. But his uninteresting, unfitting origins to his claim as a psychic dry up in front of this man. “Something like that,” Reigen says instead. He twitches his feet out a degree, trying to make the movement seem intentional even though it feels like an involuntary spasm. Then, on a hunch, he raises one finger and points at the man. “Is that why you’re here?”

He smiles, an acknowledgement of Reigen’s deduction. “Something like that,” he says. 

When Reigen walks, the man follows, falling naturally in step beside him. Reigen, again, can’t shake the feeling that he’s done this before, that there’s nothing more natural in the whole world than him walking Reigen home. He tries to watch him, in careful, appraising glances caught in brief seconds before the man can notice his gaze. He never does, or if he does he doesn’t let on. He only walks with long, silent steps, Reigen creating enough noise to fill the otherwise empty street on his own. Reigen settles his hands in his pockets, keeping his expression as natural as this man apparently understands it to be. He bites at the inside of the mouth as he runs it all over in his head, over and over with each step.

It’s when Reigen gets back to his apartment and he’s idling in front of the entrance that the man says, “it’s good to catch up. When was the last time I"ve been able to see you?”

Reigen doesn’t know how to say that he’s been wondering the same thing— the more he’s walked with him, the more he knows that he knows this man. Not only his face— his gestures are natural somehow. They fit into patterns Reigen recognizes, and his voice’s cadence is comfortably familiar. He knows this man well. Reigen does not know many people well. “Too long,” Reigen says. “Drop by the office sometime. Are you staying in Seasoning City for a while?”

“I think so,” the man says. “As long as I need to.” He’s watching something in the sky, eyes squinting to see something Reigen can’t. It’s a feeling Reigen’s grown used to, being around Mob— he follows the man’s gaze and tries to see whatever he sees anyway.

But then, his eyes are suddenly back on Reigen, with a focus that is frightening in its intensity. “It was good seeing you again, Reigen,” he says.

“Yeah,” Reigen says. “Good seeing you too, Mogami.”

The name slides out of his mouth before he can even think of where it came from. He feels himself go stiff as he reaches towards the source, trying to connect it to something—

Mogami’s hand suddenly claps onto his shoulder, and it’s like touching a white hot stovetop. He spasms violently, shoulder jerking under the hand, but Mogami stays steady, grip unbelievably tight. 

Then the feeling is gone, and Mogami’s hand is a normal, easy weight. There is no heat to his hand— it’s clammy, even.

“I’ll see you again,” Mogami says, not as a question. His hand stays until Reigen feels steady on his feet, then slips away to his side. 

Reigen blinks up at him, sweat dripping down his forehead and into his eyes. His brain feels hollowed out, like whatever he’d been thinking had been burnt out of him. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking anything at all. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “Yeah. See you.”

It’s not til he’s saying the words that he realizes Mogami is already gone.

Later, Reigen unbuttons his shirt and inspects his shoulder. The skin is smooth and unharmed. There’s no evidence of anything, although Reigen’s not even sure what he’s looking for. 

He must have imagined it, Reigen decides as he runs his finger over the too-sharp angles of bone. The pain that had been real enough to make his lips go dead white.

That night the dream goes beyond Reigen walking down the empty street and follows him into the office. It’s empty, dark, rotting, just like his apartment. Maybe it’s worse than his apartment. The floor is stained and old. His wooden desk is going black. It looks like something has been eating ravenous holes in it, boring out from the center. Reigen flops into his desk chair and it groans under his weight. From how it looks, he almost expects it to give out. Everything looks like it should give out. Through the dusty, broken blinds, the black creeps in. Reigen settles his ankle onto his knee and props his elbows on the arms of his chair. His hands meet in front of his face as he waits. Reigen doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. Time stretches out, forever and ever in the office’s empty silence.

Reigen wakes up before whatever he’s waiting for arrives, with the insistent beep of his alarm blaring in his ear. His apartment is normal, again. The sky isn’t pitch black. Crows don’t weigh down telephone wires in huge, too still masses. But Reigen can’t quite convince himself it’s not a dream until he arrives at his office and finds it in its usual cheap, tacky glory. 

He’s standing in the doorway, watching the way the light moves across the office, when a voice says behind him, “not a bad place you’ve set up for yourself.” 

“Well, it’s a long standing work in progress,” Reigen says, waving a hand in dismissal. “The landlord won’t let me make all the changes I want to make— like this wallpaper. Awful. If business stays this good, maybe I’ll start looking at better locations.” He almost adds that not having to do massages in a closet, at least, would be a step up, but he snaps his mouth shut after taking a breath in preparation for the thought.

Mogami steps past him into the office, movements silent, and comes to a halt in its center. He is extraordinarily out of place, surrounded by cheap trinkets, half melted incense candles, and all of Reigen’s lumpy furniture that he’d picked up at thrift stores. Reigen, suddenly, is sure it has to be obvious to Mogami. Reigen is a fake, the most ridiculous charlatan there ever was, and Mogami doesn’t have the obscured vision of a child looking for guidance to keep him from recognizing that. Reigen says, before he can stop himself, “what about you? I don’t think I’ve seen where you work.”

“I don’t have a permanent location,” he says. He’s looking down at the desk, and Reigen can’t see his expression. “I suppose I’m… well. A freelancer, of sorts.” 

Mogami runs his hand along the desk’s surface, feeling the uneven grain under his fingertips. Then his hand comes away, and he’s holding a round, unusually shiny coin. Reigen can’t quite make out the amount on its surface, but in the sunlight breaking through the blinds it looks like pure gold. Mogami holds it up to inspect. His dark eyes narrow. Then he drops his hand and returns it to the desk. Reigen watches, trying to find the trick to it— the coin wasn’t there before, but there’s no sly hand movement to make it appear. Maybe it really did spring out of thin air. “There’s the remnants of powerful aura in this office,” he says. “Spiritually charged, I suppose.” 

“From exorcisms, no doubt,” Reigen says immediately. “All that client work over the years, you know, leaves something behind.” He doesn’t know if that’s the case, but Mogami knows, without a doubt. The lie is ridiculous and obvious, even to Reigen’s ears. His heels rise off the floor and then come down, settling on the ground without settling his nerves.

But Mogami doesn’t say anything about it. He’s expressionless as Reigen speaks. His gaze turns slowly across the office again, never stopping on Reigen’s face. Reigen tracks his gaze along with him, trying to see anything at all worth seeing. “Naturally,” Mogami says eventually, and Reigen keeps himself from relaxing visibly. “Do you work alone?”

Reigen feels rigid, brittle. “Yes,” Reigen says, louder than he means to. “Well, practically, anyway. I’ve got this student that I’m training, he helps out around the office. Really he only rings up customers usually, it’s just something to keep him occupied— it’s good for something to have kids to do, you know.” 

“Is he coming in today?” Mogami asks, almost without interest.

“No,” Reigen says, with sudden warmth. “No, he was getting sick the other day, so I told him to take off.” This isn’t a lie, actually— Mob’s eyes were particularly glassy when he’d left the office, along with a runny nose, so Reigen had told him to take a few days off. He wasn’t any good to Reigen sick, and Reigen wasn’t interested in becoming sick himself. “It’s too bad, really, he probably has a lot to learn from you.” 

Mogami nods, turning away, and Reigen suddenly wonders if maybe even Mob would see it. The obvious fact that between Mogami and Reigen, one is real and one is nothing but bluster.  His role as a mentor would be swiftly removed, Mob would have the teacher who could actually help him, and Reigen would be alone. Reigen, selfish, selfishly as always, is fervently glad Mob wouldn’t be coming to the office today.

“Well,” Mogami is saying as Reigen suddenly focuses again, “I suppose you wouldn’t mind a helping hand today. While I’m around.”

Mogami’s closed the distance between them at some point, and Reigen’s looking up into his face. He’s in shadow. Reigen can’t make out the details of his expression, but he might be smiling. Reigen schools his own expression and snaps his arm up, coughing into his elbow percussively. “Well,” he says loudly, something uncomfortable twitching in his stomach, “if you’re looking for something to do, then sure— mind you, I don’t really need the help, of course, but I understand if—”

A hand rests on Reigen’s shoulder. 

As soon as it touches him, it’s like he’s frozen. Mogami’s hand is firm on his shoulder, even as his expression is calm. The words die in Reigen’s throat, something they never do. Mogami cuts in without making it an interruption. “I think we both prefer not to work alone,” he says. And this time, Reigen can see the dark crease of a smile in the shadows of his face.

As the day wears on, Reigen decides that sending Mob away didn’t save him from contracting illness. His eyes keep sliding shut without him noticing, and when he opens them time has slipped away from him. There is an exhaustion settling into his core.  He doesn’t think he sleeps through any clients, but Reigen supposes it doesn’t matter— regardless of when he nods off or jolts into awareness, Mogami is always there. 

Days pass, and Mob is better. He returns to the office looking the same as always, in his dark school uniform and serious expression. Reigen is not worse, exactly. But he is still tired. He watches Mob over his folded hands as he sits down at his desk, then pulls a crumpled worksheet from his bag. He smooths it out with his hands, almost frowns when its wrinkles don’t spring loose, and then stares down at an array of numbers. He doesn’t pick up a pencil, merely contemplates. Glowing green light falls on the sheet of paper as Dimple drifts around his head.

“Enjoy having a few sick days, Mob?” Reigen asks.

“No,” Mob says. “I mean,” he qualifies, “it’s nice not to have to go to school. But I missed a lot of work, so I have to catch up. I don’t really understand it all.” The last part sounds confessional, instead of a statement of the obvious. Reigen doesn’t comment, though, so Mob adds, “Ritsu brought me my homework, but it’s hard to follow when you don’t have a teacher…”

Mob trails off with the hint of hope turning up the end up of his voice. Reigen always wonders if he’s trying to play on his pity, or if he really is that genuinely lost. Either way, Reigen straightens his arms above his head as he stretches, and says, “I’ll help you with it later, Mob. We’ve got jobs to attend to first. Got a client coming in in a few minutes.”

His smile is, as always, barely a shift in expression, but Reigen can feel the soft glow of Mob’s happiness from across the room. “Thank you, Shishou. Oh—” he concentrates, suddenly. “Is it the haunted teapot?”

There’s a part of Reigen that’s impressed that Mob managed to remember, but he still shakes his head. “No, I handled that one already,” he says,  standing up. The desk chair bangs into the windowsill behind him, and Reigen hastily grabs it to keep it from scuffing up the sill. Then he pushes it to the side.

Mob watches this in silence, along with Dimple. Dimple looks, as always, unimpressed, but Mob is frowning in concentration. “Oh,” he says. “I thought you would reschedule.”

Normally, Mob would be right— Reigen reschedules appointments involving actual ghosts and spirits to accommodate Mob’s specific schedule. But Mogami had been there, instead, and the ghost had vanished with a wave of his hand. The room had suddenly been cold when he’d done it, strange and dark in a way Reigen couldn’t explain. His skin prickles at the memory. “I’m not completely helpless on my own, Mob,” Reigen says with a sniff, trying to shake the memory off. “Remember who’s the student and master here.” 

He rests his hands in the small of his back and pushes. It pops, and Mob flinches at the noise. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he says. “Just, normally, you reschedule. That’s all.”

“Right,” Dimple says, aura flaring in anticipation of his own joke. “Usually you’re too busy making grandiose statements to actually do anything— it must have been some impressive multitasking.”

“I’m perfectly capable of speaking and working at the same time, thank you,” Reigen snaps, rounding the desk. “I do it all the time. Not that you were there, Dimple.”

“I’ve been busy,” Dimple says with a sniff. “There are things I have to attend to that you wouldn’t understand.”

Reigen rolls his eyes. “Sure. All sorts of important business, like finding new people to pester on your quest for power. Anyway,” he says, focusing on Mob once more, “an old friend dropped by while you were sick, Mob— he helped me out. No need to worry at all.” There’s something bothering him about the arrangement of some cheap trinkets on top of a bookshelf. Reigen rubs his chin, then moves a jade figurine a few centimeters back. He swipes away some visible dust, and steps away. “Not that I’d have any trouble if he hadn’t, of course— there’s really no need for you to worry about me succumbing to overwork or anything. Although mind you— mind you—”

Before he can control it, Reigen’s mouth cracks open in a yawn. By the time he finishes, his jaw aching, he finds that Dimple and Mob are staring at him. Not in the way Reigen’s grown accustomed to. He’s the most lively thing in the room, usually, since the other options are a long dead spirit and Mob, so he gathers up attention. But this is actual staring, wide eyed and confused. Reigen’s hands slow. Then he leans back against his desk, frowning. “What?”

“I didn’t know you knew other espers, Shishou,” Mob says, voice careful.

“I didn’t know you had friends,” Dimple says.

Reigen snaps upright. “Well, obviously, Dimple,” he says sharply. “Maybe I don’t discuss the details of my very active social life with you and Mob, but I assure you it exists. I prefer to keep things professional. Keep things… Private.” 

It’s too obviously defensive, and Reigen winces at the grin spreading across Dimple’s face. “Right, right. Sorry to doubt how busy you keep. Guess I figured you wouldn’t spend all your time bothering some middle schooler if—”

Mercifully, Mob gently bats at Dimple with one hand. The spirit flows away, leaving a green streak in the air behind him. He frowns at Mob, but Mob doesn’t seem to notice. He says, one hand still held up to Dimple, “I didn’t mean it that way, Shishou. I was just surprised you’ve never mentioned this esper before.”

Reigen blinks. “Well,” he says. “I suppose that would be surprising, actually. Honestly, it’s strange that it’s never come up. Since it’s rather relevant to our business, and all— actually,” Reigen says, a memory uncovering somewhere in his head, “he’s what got me into this business. I was inspired, and I wanted to carry on that legacy, so to speak.”

He pats the top of Mob’s head on this last sentence with one square hand, ruffling the straight black hair. Mob blinks up at him. When he pulls his hand away, the hair falls back into place with startling immediacy. 

“Guess you don’t need my help, then,” Dimple says. “If this guy’s got your back all the time.” He drops down and away from Reigen’s eye level, streaming through the floor.

Reigen, as always, feels the need to find where Dimple will reappear in the room. He keeps himself from looking, because he knows that it gives Dimple the satisfaction and because Dimple always startles him anyway. “Guess not,” he says, leaning against the desk again. “You can return to other things in your other busy schedule. I’ll figure out some way to manage without a nuisance like you.”

“I’ll do that,” Dimple says into Reigen’s ear, and Reigen jumps away, arms spinning. Dimple laughs as Reigen catches himself, then drifts away to Mob’s side again. Reigen glowers after him, but instead of working up a response he settles for straightening his sleeves, like he can smooth away the moment with the wrinkles in his jacket.

Mob watches, eyes not even widening when Reigen lunged back. “He sounds very interesting,” he says with something approaching curiosity. “Maybe I could meet him.”

“He’s a busy sort of man, Mob,” Reigen says quickly. “Don’t take it personally. Really, I hardly ever see him, and I’m his friend. He’s probably already left Seasoning City, actually— always on the move. He’s a freelancer. There’s benefits to that sort of business model, of course, but I enjoy the permanency of a loyal customer base and a steady—”

Mob’s eyes are beginning to glaze over. Before Reigen can fully settle into a tangent that will wholly drag their attention away from Mogami, their appointment buzzes the door. There’s no ghost haunting this man, only an unfortunate tightness in his shoulders and a mouth full of complaints. Reigen gives him a deep tissue massage until he’s run out of grievances. Mob rings him up with his careful, plodding efficiency. When he leaves, he doesn’t bring up Reigen’s friend again. Reigen wants to be grateful. He is grateful. But something about Mob’s blank surprise at Mogami’s existence makes his nerves buzz around underneath the weight of memory.

Reigen’s assumption that Mogami has already left town is proven immediately wrong when he and Mob part ways once again. Reigen turns, the effort expended to keep himself upright seeping out of him, and Mogami is there. The sky is red behind him.

“I thought you’d headed out already,” Reigen says, instead of jumping like he wants to. “On the move to greener pastures and all that.”

“I didn’t plan to,” Mogami says, beginning to walk again. “Eager to have me gone?”

His stride takes him past Reigen, and Mogami dips his shoulder to nudge him. There’s no force to the motion, but Reigen still stumbles, barely catching himself after a few tumbling steps. His legs are shaky, suddenly. Reigen drives his palms into his eyes, trying to snap himself into awareness. “No,” he says. “No, of course not. I just figured… You’re busy.” 

There isn’t the sound of Mogami’s footsteps anymore. Reigen doesn’t take his hands away. Maybe when he does the street will be empty. Mogami will have vanished after all. But Reigen finally does, and he’s watching him, hands in his pockets and an expression that Reigen can’t quite read. “Never too busy for a friend,” Mogami says evenly. 

But there’s a hint of something in his tone that Reigen can’t figure out— it’s the same as Mob’s almost question in the office, about this friend that Reigen had apparently never mentioned before. He’s said something that doesn’t quite make sense. “Right,” Reigen says. “Of course you’re right.” He runs his tongue along the front of his teeth, trying to find the right way to push, to arrange both statements in his mind correctly.

Before he can figure out the way to do it, a smile flickers across Mogami’s face. It’s hollow and ill humored. “Obviously. What kind of person would I be, picking work over an old friend? Your opinion of me must be worse than I thought.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Reigen says hastily. Something twitches inside his ribcage at the words. He straightens out again and reaches for something to cast it aside, trying to track his lost thread of thoughts back to its beginning. “How— how long has it been?” He pushes his fingers into his forehead in a show of concentration. Reigen can feel the edges of his nails pressing into skin.

He doesn’t answer at first. The smile’s vanished between Reigen’s blinks, and his mouth is thin. His eyes are narrow. “How long since what?” 

There’s a part of Reigen that wants to let it go, then. Simply laugh it off, so he doesn’t have to hear that tone anymore. But Reigen supposes it’s never been in his nature to back down. “Since we met, I mean,” he says. “I was thinking today, I— I can’t remember how we met.” 

Impossibly, Reigen’s voice trembles on the end of the sentence. His eyes drop. There was some other meaning, maybe, to the hole in his memory when he began, but all it reveals now is a strange gap in Reigen’s head. Mogami’s stare only grows harder as he stands silent. Reigen manages a laugh, but it’s weak and ill. It’s too late now to pretend there’s any humor in the statement.

Mogami, again, is impossibly close. His movement is always sudden and happens without Reigen’s notice. Reigen doesn’t have time to react before Mogami has a hand holding his wrist. 

His grip is not harsh, but there’s no intent to let go either. He pulls Reigen’s hand away from his face, and Reigen is left staring without filter into Mogami’s water-dark eyes. There’s no way to break from the intensity of his eyes. Reigen holds his gaze, trying to betray nothing in his expression, and waits for judgment.

“It’s worse than I thought,” Mogami says finally. The words are an ultimatum. “Arataka. There is a curse on your shoulder.”

“A curse,” Reigen says. Then, he tries the word again. “A curse?” 

When he pulls his eyes away from Mogami, they’re not on the street anymore. In fact, they’re in Reigen’s apartment. Reigen’s sitting on his cheap couch, and the sky, visible through Reigen’s crooked blinds, is black now. He starts, then grips his knees. It’s the only way to keep his hands steady. 

“Yes, a curse,” Mogami says from behind him, and Reigen jolts again. He passes into Reigen’s view, stride long and purposeful even though it can’t carry him far through Reigen’s small apartment. “Some energy’s attached itself to you. I’m not certain of the source. Some spirit, maybe, or a displeased client.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound likely,” Reigen says. “Mob— we destroy all the spirits thoroughly. No chance of a curse being left behind. And I have a high customer satisfaction rate.” He tries to inject authority into his tone, like he can talk this supposed curse out of existence. But his stomach is curling in on itself. Panic begins to creep around the edges of his mind, making his breath tight in his lungs.

Mogami stops in front of him, arms held behind his back. His eye is displeased. “This isn’t the time for jokes.”

“I’m not,” Reigen says in protest. “Joking, I mean. I don’t know what could have done this— why wouldn’t have Mob noticed something? Why wouldn’t I have noticed something?” The second sentence comes as a useless correction, an implied lie Reigen can’t stop himself from making. Still, he sorts through an array of customers from the past week, and then the past month. Nothing appears that seems like a likely solution for Mogami’s problem. 

Mogami sits not on the couch, but on the low coffee table in front of it. He rests his elbows on his knees, which rise almost to his chest. His hands fold in front of him, dangling loosely by the wrist. “Often these things can go unnoticed by the people they most greatly affect,” Mogami says gravely. “I’m sure you’ve seen it before. This is an insidious, careful sort of curse. And your student is only a child.”

The response dies before Reigen can even make it. There’s only an intake of air that comes out as nothing. Reigen drops his eyes to stare at his feet, bare against the scratched up floor. The wood seems strange in the dark. He presses his lips, tight together. 

“Arataka,” Mogami says. “I think I can help you. If I can figure out the source of this problem, I can get rid of it. But you have to be honest. Do you have any idea what could have happened? When this could have started? You said you’ve been having memory problems.” 

His voice is soft. It settles like a weight in Reigen’s gut. Reigen swallows and grips his knees tighter. “I didn’t say that,” Reigen says, with as much force as he can muster. “I—”

But then the contradiction is obvious, and Mogami’s arched eyebrow is enough to tell Reigen that he’s caught it, too. “You’re proving my point,” he says. “You can’t remember how we met, Arataka. What else could you be losing?” 

“No, I don’t—” Reigen scraps over his memory again, trying to make sense of things again. Things aren’t lining up right, now that he’s looking at them properly. Reigen has a shaky sense of Mogami, but he can’t muster up anything about him beyond the unshakable sense that he’s important. There’s something he’s lost, so much he’s lost. It’s like Reigen’s begun to assemble a puzzle only to realize half the pieces are missing. In a burst, he says, “there’s nothing wrong, I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well, lately, that’s all— been having strange nightmares—”

“What kind of nightmares?”

“It’s nothing,” Reigen spits out. “They’re just dreams. I appreciate your concern, but you really don’t have anything to worry about. I can handle myself fine—”

Reigen stands, bringing his eyes up finally to the rest of the apartment, and the words turn into a strangled gasp. It’s his dream. The apartment is nothing but ash and rot and ruin. He can see it crawling up the walls, the shadows getting deeper, the cracks getting wider. There is the beat of wings outside, like something’s trying to get in through the breaking window. It’s like it’ll disintegrate into nothing, leaving Reigen to be swallowed up by black and black and black—

Hands grip his shoulders, and Reigen’s on the floor. His hands are covering his face, blocking out whatever is around him. He can’t remember putting them there. He can’t remember sinking to his knees. But he’s on his knees, and the world around him is hidden from his sight.

“Arataka,” Mogami’s voice says, from somewhere behind his fingers. “Listen to me. Arataka.”

Reigen can’t move his hands off his face. In the end, he doesn’t— Mogami pries them away from his cheek, finger by finger, wholly exposing the world around him again. It’s fine. The apartment is still tacky and cheap, but it’s not rot. It’s not collapsing around him. 

Mogami is kneeling in front of him, too, and Reigen is suddenly aware of how badly he’s shaking. “It was rot,” he manages, words croaking. “Like in my dream. What’s— Keiji—”

Before he can even think of what he’s trying to say, Mogami says, “I’ll fix it.”

For the moment, there’s not much to be done, so Reigen goes to work.

It’s the only thing he can do, really, regardless of whether it brings him towards things that can curse him, or drain his energy, or make him lose time and reality— Reigen still has bills to pay. And it’s the only way to get away from the paranoia that sets its jaws in him if he stops moving. 

For a while, nothing unusual happens, so Reigen almost begins to doubt that anything unusual happened in the first place. Clients come and go. Reigen does massages and Mob does exorcisms. Dimple does not show up at all— he apparently took Reigen’s charge seriously, which is fine. Eventually he’ll get bored and come back. But Reigen is still exhausted, his dreams are still terrible, and birds gather in huge, horrible clumps on telephone wires. 

Mogami goes away— to research the curse more thoroughly, he says. He’ll be back soon. Reigen will be fine in his absence. Nausea settles in Reigen’s gut, and stays there the whole time Mogami is gone. Nobody else knows, Reigen thinks. The curse could carry out its final purpose, whatever that is, and no one would be there to stop it. 

For all of this, Mob says nothing. He never indicates anything is wrong. Reigen watches him with a slow growing paranoia, the same way Reigen watches everyone who walks through the door. If a customer placed a curse on Reigen when his back was turned, Mob’s face never reveals it. Mogami must be right. Mob must not know. Maybe curses are invisible. Maybe this one is, this strange, slow moving thing sitting on his shoulder.

But finally one day, when Reigen is watching a customer leave with unusual intensity, that Mob says anything. 

The customer is a short, dumpy woman who brings in a large pan that she insists must be cursed because every time she bakes anything in it it burns without fail. Reigen hums and strokes his chin and frowns down at it and then regales her with a long list of kitchen safety tips and a proper method for baking perfect cakes. Then Mob, after watching all this, gets up and exorcises a spirit clinging to the pan that Reigen didn’t see. The woman thanks them and, after some cajoling, pays. She bangs the pan loudly against the doorframe as she leaves, and then shuts the door even louder. Reigen hovers by the door, staring at the space where she stood.

“Is something wrong, Shishou?” Mob asks.

Reigen jerks. Then he jerks back, into what he imagines is a calm, confident stance. “Well, that’s an interesting question, Mob,” he says. Then he turns on his heel to focus on him. “Is there something wrong? Have you noticed anything strange?” He can’t keep the hope from creeping into his voice, stretching out the words into something long and odd.

“I,” Mob begins, now uncertain. “You’ve been staring at the door for a while. That’s all.” 

“Of course,” Reigen says swiftly. “Mob, I’ve begun to take a more serious eye on our customers. There are some strange people in the world. Strange people, and strange spirits. All capable of strange things. Horrible things, even.”

Mob stares at him. “She just had a pan,” he says. “It wasn’t very horrible.”

“Obviously,” Reigen says quickly, waving his hands, “it was only a pan. The pan’s besides the point, Mob, the point is the curse. The curse on the pan. On our customers, more generally speaking. Curses can spread, can’t they, Mob? They’re like diseases.” 

He’s thinking about it. Reigen can tell because of the way Mob’s eyes aren’t quite focusing on the desk he’s staring down into, like he’s waiting for it to reveal some kind of secret to him. “Well,” he says uncertainly. “I guess sometimes curses on objects can spread to people. Like a disease. But that woman wasn’t cursed. Her things just kept getting burnt. Shishou,” he says, tone suddenly confessional, “the curse on the pan would have done something besides burning her things. I think maybe she’s… Not a very good baker.”

Reigen settles his hands on his hips. “It’s outside my jurisdiction to speculate on the baking abilities of my clients, Mob,” he says. “We do curses. Or not curses, the dismissal of curses.”

“Exorcisms.”

“That’s what I said.” 

Mob blinks at the desk. Reigen waits, fingers beginning to twitch against his waistband, as he thinks, and thinks, and thinks some more. The clock ticking on the wall grows louder and louder in Reigen’s ear. He can feel where it might begin to change again, into heavy thumps, into something waiting outside the door, into the sound of wings flapping in the air. Sweat makes Reigen’s back slick.

“I don’t think I get what you mean,” Mob says, and the clock is nothing but a ticking clock. “Sorry.”

“All I meant,” Reigen says, removing one hand from his waist to gesticulate in haste, “is that I want to keep a better eye on our customers. Make sure they don’t do anything nasty. Leave anything nasty behind.”

“Oh,” Mob says, in a tone of dawning comprehension. Sometimes this is followed by a statement that makes Reigen realize Mob’s comprehended in a different sort of way, created with his circuitous internal logic that Reigen still doesn’t understand. But this time, Mob nods and says, “I’ll be more careful too, Shishou.”

Reigen nods back. “Right,” he says. “Let me know if you think of anything strange about our clients, Mob.” Then he waits.

It would be the perfect time, of course, for Mob to say something. To mention a strange customer, or a strange spirit from the past, something that could have hurt Reigen. But Mob doesn’t do any of that. He only nods, and goes back to putting up some of the filing that the client left behind for them. He doesn’t say anything about it at all, the whole day that follows.

Reigen goes home and opens the apartment door. It’s nothing but black. Reigen shuts the door. He presses his forehead against the door and breathes in, then breathes in again. An interminable amount of time passes before he can open the door again.

He flips the light on. It’s his apartment. It looks normal, Reigen thinks. He’s not sure of any of the details anymore. 

Mogami comes back. Reigen opens the door one morning and he’s standing outside of it, eyes grim.

“You could have knocked,” Reigen says. But his knees are suddenly weak with relief, and he sags against the door. “You could have— I would’ve answered, you don’t have to wait outside—”

“It’s gotten worse,” Mogami says as Reigen slides down the door. “I can see it. I didn’t mean to be away for so long. Arataka, I’m sorry.”

Reigen raises one hand when Mogami crouches next to him, but Mogami doesn’t wait. He takes Reigen’s arm and pulls him upright. His heels rise off the floor briefly before Mogami settles him down again. “It’s fine,” Reigen says, pressing one hand against his forehead. “It’s— tell me you’ve figured this out. You’ve figured something out.”

Mogami doesn’t say anything for a too long time. Reigen drags the hand down his face. “Shit,” he says. 

“I’m getting close,” Mogami says. His hands are still firm on Reigen’s arms, and before Reigen can think, he’s guiding Reigen back inside the apartment, to settle down on the couch. He’s exhausted, Reigen realizes as he’s led down. He’s been exhausted, but a new wave hits now that the invitation to rest is here. Reigen’s head tilts against the hard back of the couch, and he breathes out. His eyes droop shut.

The hands holding his arms linger before finally pulling away. Reigen cracks open an eye to see Mogami standing cross armed in front of him. Reigen’s never been so glad to see someone in his life, he realizes suddenly. It’s almost sickening. But no one’s ever helped Reigen like this— it’s a dedication that he thought no one had for him. Reigen folds his own arms over his chest, trying to disguise the sudden tremble in his fingers. 

“Arataka,” Mogami says. “You get an odd assortment of clients, I know— but do can you think of any possible reason for this? Any at all?”

“No,” Reigen says. “No ideas. It’s been the usual assortment of people with— nothing problems, little petty things.”

“Petty things from petty lives.”

Reigen’s brow creases. He opens his eyes and frowns at the ceiling. Then he moves his eyes, to stare at Mogami. “What?”

“Well, it’s the implication you’re making,” Mogami says. “You think they can’t possibly affect you that way. It’s too inconsequential, isn’t it? Too little and pointless to brush up against your life.” 

His expression doesn’t shift from polite neutrality the whole time he’s speaking. Reigen can’t quite get the words to match his face. There has to be some other meaning to it, for it to fit together. Reigen licks his lips. “I didn’t mean it that way. I— I asked Mob, too, and he didn’t see anything either. So it’s not just me being,” Reigen limply waves a hand, “judgmental, or whatever you call it.”

“I’m only joking, Arataka,” Mogami says lightly. “No need to be so affronted.” But then his head tilts. He considers. “Mob,” Mogami repeats, testing out the word. “Your student?”

“Yeah,” Reigen says. “He’s a good kid. Wouldn’t think anything like that.” 

Mogami looks at Reigen. The sharp edge of his chin cuts deeply into his hand. Reigen closes his eyes again. Maybe you can sleep off curses, he thinks. Maybe if he takes a good, heavy nap, one without dreams of crows or darkness or rot, stretches all the kinks out of his back, and has a good smoke, it’ll all blow over. It’s all he tells his clients, anyway, and maybe sometimes it helps. But before Reigen can try it, Mogami says, “I wouldn’t have thought you would have mentioned it to him.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Reigen says with a sigh. “It was— indirect. I don’t want him to worry.”

“You don’t want him to feel as though his faith is misplaced,” Mogami says, with a tone of gentle correction.

Reigen lifts a hand to pinch his nose. It feels immeasurably heavy. “Sure. That.”

He can hear Mogami shift. There’s a sense of pressure, like his angled knees are mere centimeters away from Reigen. A hand settles on his leg. “I suppose it’s for the best,” Mogami says, “that you find it difficult to be transparent with him. He would feel guilty, I’m sure— for not catching it sooner. I certainly do.”

Something is incredibly tight in Reigen’s chest. He can’t make any response, or whatever is winding even more firmly with make him crack. So he doesn’t answer. He holds still.

“I don’t mean to be blunt, Arataka,” Mogami says. “It’s important for us to be honest, moving forward. If I’m going to figure out what’s going on, I need to understand wholly what you’re experiencing.”

It’s still beyond him to speak, Reigen finds, so he nods. Mogami squeezes his knee, firm and reassuring. “Tell me what’s happened,” he says.

Reigen tells him everything. Every minute thing that’s happened in his absence, from his dreams to the floors giving way to the clients and the spirits they brought with them. Mogami doesn’t say whether it helps or not, but he nods, and after a brief farewell and another promise, he’s gone.

But he’s back, the next day, with the same question. So Reigen tells him that the sky was black outside when he woke up, but then he looked again and it was early grey dawn. The moments had been only seconds apart. Nothing happened at the office that Reigen knows about, but he got there and didn’t remember a thing until Mob got to the office. Maybe he’d slept, but his exhaustion hadn’t abated. It never did, now, so it seemed pointless to bring up.

“This rot you’ve mentioned before,” Mogami says, leaning against the wall. “It never appears outside your apartment?”

“Only when I’m dreaming,” Reigen says. He stares down into the floor, scraping through it again, trying to find the thing he’s missing. “Would— would the ghost be around here, if it’s at the apartment? Like, it can only affect me, if I’m here.”

Mogami makes a dismissive sound. “I doubt that. Is there any focal point to it? Something that makes it happen?”

Reigen kneads his fingers against each other. There isn’t any, of course. Unless he counts himself, as the cause of all this ruin. It seems apt, somehow. The only thing making the world give way around Reigen being Reigen himself would be appropriate.

“No,” Reigen says. “Nothing.”

Mogami doesn’t answer. Reigen watches his shadow move across the floor with him, and then he’s next to him. Reigen’s bangs block him from view— they’ve gotten long. They need to be cut. But details like that are hard to concentrate on. 

As soon as he thinks the thought, Mogami pushes them out of his face, then keeps pushing. Reigen’s head is tilted back to stare up at him. Mogami’s palm is cool against his forehead.

“You’re not keeping anything from me,” Mogami says.

“No,” Reigen says.

“Anything at all could be relevant, Arataka. I mean that.”

“I’ve told you everything, Keiji,” Reigen says. There’s something a little too panicked in his, something not like him that Reigen doesn’t like at all. He swallows and steadies his voice out again. “Trust me.”

There’s still things Reigen can’t say. There are always things Reigen can’t ever bring himself to speak the pathetic, obvious truth on. Mogami must know he’s not a psychic— he must have known forever, even in the long holes in Reigen’s memory. If Reigen concentrates, he can pull up the idea of a teenaged Mogami, and then he can put it next to himself as a teenager and it feels correct. He’s known Mogami for long enough, then, for his inconsistencies to be obvious. But Mogami hasn’t said them aloud, and Reigen can’t say them either. He can’t pull himself out of this thing he’s trapped himself in, for no reason other than his own pride. Even if it drove away the only person willing to help him.

“Of course I trust you,” Mogami says, finally. “I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

Reigen wishes desperately he could look anywhere but Mogami’s calm face, but his hand still holds him steady. He can see the rot spread again on the ceiling above his head, slow and methodical. There’s no point to closing his eyes— it’ll still be there, along with Mogami, when he opens them again. There’s no point in shutting it all out. Reigen closes his eyes anyway.

Reigen makes it to the office. 

The floor is a puddle of black that Reigen steps onto. It’s like he’s standing on nothing. He shuts the door behind him, and the lock clicks into place without his touch. The overhead fan thumps out a pattern, oppressive in the quiet of the room. Reigen walks to his desk. His shoes click against the ground. He slips off his jacket and drapes it over the back of the chair. Then he sits down, and looks at the rat sitting on his desk. 

It’s a large rat, Reigen thinks— he doesn’t really know the proper size for the rat, except that they’re always larger than Reigen thinks they should be. It’s got black fur, which Reigen can somehow make out in the dark of the office, even though everything is black on black on black. It’s sitting on its back legs, fiddling with its fur, completely unconcerned with Reigen. 

Then the rat looks up at Reigen. “Why do you think scams work on people?” It asks.

Reigen folds his hands in front of his face and stares at the rat. It doesn’t blink, or move, or do anything besides sit and wait for an answer. So Reigen pulls open a drawer and shuffles around, finally locating a box of cigarettes he’s been meaning to throw away. He yanks out a cigarette, finds his lighter, and then balances the cigarette between the teeth. The lighter is a bloom of light in the dark as the cigarette catches, but the dark swallows it up before Reigen lets it go out. Reigen lets smoke fill his lungs as he considers the rat again. Finally, he says, “can you repeat the question?”

“I am asking,” the rat says, “why scams work on people. Is it because people want to trust that someone can simply whisk their problems away and will listen to anyone with a loud voice? Is it because they don’t want to look for their own solution for the problem? Or is it simply because people are greedy, and stupid, and you just have to be a little less stupid to scam the rest?”

There’s too much smoke building behind his teeth, so Reigen leans back and blows smoke at the ceiling. The fan spreads it like smog across the room. He watches it cast shadows on the wall. They move with each battering shake of the rickety fan. “I guess all those reasons could be it,” Reigen says at last.

“That’s not how this game works,” the rat says. 

“I wasn’t thinking it was a game,” Reigen says. Stretching one arm up, he folds it behind his head and settles back again, head resting into the crook of his elbow. He looks back down at the rat, and frowns. “Are you a violation of the safety code? Am I going to get in trouble with the health inspector, or something, for having giant rats sitting on my desk posing philosophical problems?”

The rat watches him flick ash off his cigarette before taking another drag. “You’re avoiding the question,” the rat says. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Reigen mumbles.

“You’re avoiding the question,” it repeats, “which I find odd, as I think it’s one you should know the answer to intimately. How does the greatest psychic of the twenty-first century go about fooling everyone every day?”

Reigen twitches his fingers up and down the cigarette as he looks down at the desk. There are some loose papers sitting on top, that Reigen must have left out, but he can’t make out any details of the text. It’s all nonsense to his eyes. “Everyone’s different, I guess,” Reigen says finally. “You figure out what works with them, and then you do that until it doesn’t work and you try something else.”

“How interesting,” the rat says. “I’ve always felt that everyone is the same.”

Before Reigen can ask the rat what it means, Reigen’s awake. 

He jerks awake, like he’s emerging from underwater. Sweat beads like ice under his shirt. Reigen gasps, then forces himself to relax, degree by degree. It’s all right, then. It was just another nightmare. It’s always so obvious in hindsight, Reigen thinks— he never knows that it was wrong before the moment is over. He raises a shaky hand and pushes his hair back from his forehead. It’s damp from sweat. Reigen opens his eyes.

His office sits before him. The fan is too loud, and the clock ticks a steady, inevitable time. The floor is black.

Reigen’s hand is tight on the arm rest of his chair as all the breath escapes from his lungs. This isn’t how it works. He’s supposed to wake up, and then it’s over and he’s safe and he’s back in his apartment. He’s not supposed to be here. It never happens here.

The ceiling fan thumps again, and Reigen springs to his feet. The floor doesn’t give out, like he thinks it should, but Reigen runs as fast as his legs will carry him to the door. The lock is impossible to open when his fingers are shaking, but as Reigen’s panic reaches a crescendo, the door finally gives way under his fingers. 

He spills out onto the street. Reigen doesn’t stop to see if the black follows him home, if the sky is pitch in the way that doesn’t come from the night, if hundreds and hundreds of crows are beating their wings in the air around him. But it’s impossibly dark, and a horrible noise fills the air. 

Reigen doesn’t make it all the way home. His legs give out somewhere along the way as the constant exhaustion catches at his heels again, and he falls, asphalt tearing at his pants. Reigen heaves from exhaustion, or fear, or something inside of him making him sick. He knits his fingers in his hair. There’s nowhere else he can turn to. Reigen can’t get up, he can’t get moving, and even if he could he couldn’t outrun the rot that overtakes the world around him. Maybe it’ll overtake him next. Maybe Reigen will turn to nothing, dissolving into the emptiness hollowed out inside him. The thunder of wings is horrible.

Then he wakes up again.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him into awareness. As soon as Reigen feels it, he twists out from underneath it, nearly tipping the chair he’s sitting in over and dumping him out on the floor. Reigen grabs the arms of his desk chair and shoves back, away from whatever is grabbing at him, and he bangs into the blinds behind him. He makes a flurry of pointless motion that resolves into nothing. 

And then Reigen is looking at his office, bright in the midday sun, and Mob, staring at him. His hand is pulled back, away from Reigen’s spasm. Dimple, surprisingly, floats in the air beside him. But he’s staring too, with a strange look in his eye.

“Mob,” Reigen says, finally. “Sorry, that was a,” he brushes his hair off his forehead, “a nervous motion. A habit.” He stretches back briefly, in his memory, to try and find when he got up and went to the office. He can’t find it. He thinks he remembers going back to his apartment, he thinks he remembers falling asleep, but then it’s the dream of him at the office. Nothing lines up correctly when Reigen tries to make sense of it. He runs a tongue across his teeth. “What, exactly…?” 

He doesn’t know what he’s asking. “You were asleep,” Mob says, a little uncertain. “So I tried to wake you up. You didn’t at first, and I was getting a little worried, and then…”

His voice trails off into the implied. Reigen had woken up, suddenly, and explosively, in a panic wholly unlike him. Reigen clears his throat and nods. “Well, it was good of you to wake me up, then,” Reigen says, voice dismissive. “It’s bad to sleep on the job, Mob. Shows a lack of professionalism. A rare slip up for me, and I’m sorry you caught me on it.”

“You’ve been sleeping a lot, lately, Shishou,” Mob says. “In the office, I mean. I come in, and—”

“Well, it’s important to get rest, too, Mob,” Reigen says quickly. “Don’t neglect yourself for work.” He suppresses a yawn and wipes his eyes. “Do what feels right.”

Mob doesn’t look like he quite follows, and Dimple is giving Reigen an impossibly skeptical look. But finally Mob nods, and retreats to his desk. Reigen can feel his eyes on him from across the room. Dimple stays by the desk, aura drifting around in a green haze. Reigen trains his eyes on the paperwork on his desk. The details on the page don’t make sense.

“What’s wrong with you?” Dimple asks. 

His voice is quiet enough so that Mob won’t hear. Reigen doesn’t lift his eyes. He brushes his fingers across his lip, almost going to bite at his nails before he finds they’re already bitten to the quick. Reigen stalls for a moment, staring at the tips of his white fingers, before pressing them underneath his arms. “I don’t know what you mean,” Reigen says. “Fine of you to vanish for weeks on end and then show up again when you get bored.”

“Weeks—?” Dimple begins, something incredulous hinting in his voice. But then he shakes his head and drifts closer to Reigen, almost touching his forehead. “Listen, Reigen. I’m not dumb, I can tell you’re trying to hide something from Shigeo. He’s not completely stupid either, he’s just not going to call you on it. So tell me what’s up. I won’t tell him.”

Reigen shuffles the pages around on the table. “There’s nothing wrong,” he says. “I have everything handled.”

“Everything handled means there’s something wrong,” Dimple says, sinking lower towards the desk. “Look, I know you’ve got all these weird complexes, but you’re gonna dig yourself deeper in this weird hole you’re digging yourself into.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you think is wrong?” Reigen asks, lifting his eyes up to Dimple. Except it’s not really a question, when it comes out. It’s more of a challenge that Reigen didn’t know he was making.

Dimple doesn’t answer. He just looks at Reigen, like he’s some sort of hidden puzzle he can’t quite crack. It’s not visible to him, either. This thing that’s moving through Reigen like poison. Reigen presses his palms against his eyes. “Go away, Dimple,” he says flatly. “I don’t need you here if you’re going to keep telling me everything wrong with myself.”

“Fine,” Dimple says, with a burst of showy light. “Guess that’s what I get for trying to help you, eh?” 

Mob looks up at the flare in Dimple’s aura, but Dimple is already moving away across the room, leaving zigzagging streak of light in the air behind him. “Dimple?” He asks, frowning at the spirit.

“Let me know when your master’s being less of a pain in the ass, Shige,” Dimple tells him. “I’m out.” And then he zips up and away through the ceiling.

Mob stares at the space that he went through, at something Reigen has never been able to see. Then he lowers his head and turns to look at Reigen. “Shishou,” he says, voice uncertain. “Is something wrong?”

Reigen’s resting his chin on his hands, folded into a table underneath his head. He can’t bring himself quite to look at Mob. Like if he lifts his eyes, Mob will see him crumbling. “Everything’s fine, Mob,” he says. “Don’t worry about me.”

He can feel Mob watch him, for long, agonizing seconds after he says this. But finally he turns his head away, back to his paperwork. Reigen stares down at the desk, trying desperately to stay awake. But if he fell asleep, he would never know. If Reigen was asleep right now, he would never know. The line between reality and dream bleeds, and Reigen’s lost the distinction.

The rest of the day feels interminable. Reigen walks shakily back to his apartment after sending Mob home— he can’t bring himself to take Mob out like he normally does. He’s afraid that the longer he goes away from home, the more likely it is that the world will give way around him. Or the more likely it is that his legs will give out again, underneath him. 

He barely makes it inside the door of his apartment before he sprawls on the floor. He supposes there’s a certain irony in the fact that he’s sure he’s never slept more in his whole life, but he’s never been more tired either. Years of sleep deprivation catching up to him, in the form of a slow moving curse.

There’s a knock on the door behind him. When Reigen doesn’t get up to answer it, the door opens anyway, and a few moments later a cool hand rests on top of his head. Fingers work through his tangled hair, smoothing out the gnarls. “Arataka,” Mogami says.

Reigen closes his eyes and presses his face deeper into the carpet. Mogami’s hand moves with him. “It’s getting worse again,” he says.

“I can see that,” Mogami says. His voice is soothing. “Tell me what happened.”

“I was at the office,” Reigen says, sound muffled even to his ears. “And things were black— there was this rat—” fragments of their conversation return, and Reigen hurries on. “Never mind about the rat. Anyway, then I woke up, and I thought it was over, and then I was at the office again, and it was like in my dream. And I left, but then I woke up again. At the office, I mean. Things were normal, then. Mob woke me up that time.” 

The sentences string out longer than he means for them to do. He’s certain they’re nonsensical, but Mogami doesn’t comment on it. He only keeps working his hand through the layers of Reigen’s hair. “You’ve never had a dream at the office before,” Mogami says.

“No,” Reigen says. “Keiji, when— when’s this going to stop?”

Mogami’s hand goes still. Reigen waits for some kind of response— the longer he’s silent, the more fear begins to coil up his stomach. But then Mogami’s hand moves down, ghosting over his neck, and to his shoulder. He pulls Reigen upright. Reigen ends up against Mogami’s shoulder, sagging against him. “You have to trust that I can handle this, Arataka,” Mogami says. “I know this is difficult for you. But we’ll get there, I promise.”

His voice is soft, but it’s right next to Reigen’s ear. He can hear each cadence, where Mogami takes his breath, the click of his teeth as they brush against each other. Reigen shivers. He can’t quite discern why. “I know,” he says. “I just…”

“It’s a curse that inspires weakness,” Mogami says. “It’s not your fault for being susceptible.” 

 Reigen feels like ice. There’s no answer he can make. “Arataka,” Mogami says, not acknowledging his silence. “Was there anyone else at the office today?”

“Dimple,” Reigen mumbles, words taking a moment to start in his throat. “He hasn’t been there…” The exact time frame fails him, again. “For a while. But he left, quickly. I don’t… I don’t think any clients came today. It was slow.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he says, “and Mob— he was there.”

Mogami doesn’t say anything. He’s silent and contemplative. Reigen waits for some kind of response that doesn’t come. There’s only the feel of his hand on his arm. Reigen swallows, and he can feel his throat bob. “Keiji,” he says.

“I think I know what’s happening,” Mogami says suddenly. “But Arataka. You’re not going to like it.”

Reigen lifts his head up, eyes opening again. He can’t get far before Mogami’s hand steadies him. “I don’t care anymore,” he says. “I— I just want this gone, please, tell me.”

For a while, Mogami says nothing. His hand holds Reigen against his shoulder as he thinks. Reigen’s heart, suddenly, is pounding inside his chest, like a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage. Then Mogami speaks, finally. “Sometimes,” he says, then pauses. “Young psychics who don’t have control of their powers can cause problems without meaning to.”

The words don’t make any sense. Reigen can’t connect the statement to anything having to do with himself. But then, something ugly settles over him, and then it clicks. “You don’t mean,” he begins. “You can’t mean— Keiji, that can’t be it.”

“I am not saying he means to,” Mogami says. “I don’t think he’s the type to ever do something so cruel, especially to his trusted master. But these things happen, Arataka. I’m sorry it’s this way.”’

“No,” Reigen says. “You’re wrong, that’s not— that’s not possible.” Suddenly, having Mogami next to him is unbearable. He shoves Mogami’s hands off his shoulder, scrambling back to create space. Reigen lands on the palms of his hands, and the bones in his wrists pop. His legs tangle with each other when he tries to rise, so he stays down on the floor. 

Mogami doesn’t stand. He doesn’t move at all, not even to lower the hand that Reigen pushed away. But still he looms over Reigen. “And what makes you sure of that, Arataka?” His tone is clipped, suddenly. Reigen’s lost his sympathy. He can see it in the black of his eyes.

Panic is clawing at Reigen, ripping him open at every seam. Reigen trusts few people— he trusts himself, except for now, and he trusts Mogami, and he always trusts Mob. But this settles down upon him, crushing him under its weight. “He wouldn’t,” Reigen says, and his voice is shaking. His whole body is shaking. “Mob— he couldn’t do something like this—”

“He could,” Mogami says, voice sharp. “It’s in the nature of his powers. Even if he doesn’t know it himself.” Reigen’s head drops til his chin touches his chest. One hand rises up to cover his face, and Mogami’s voice grows softer. “I am not blaming him. It’s an accident. Grudge builds up around certain people, Arataka. It’s not his fault you’re one of them.”

Mogami reaches out a hand and rests it on Reigen’s outstretched leg. It’s comforting. It should be comforting, but Reigen feels sick. From his core, to the way his frame shakes, to the way Mogami’s hand feel pressed up against him. “What do I do?” His voice is pathetic to his ears. 

Mogami sighs. “You’ll have to send him away.” Reigen jerks, and Mogami’s hand tightens. “It’s the only way his powers won’t affect you— then I can counteract the effect in his absence. I know it’s not what you want, but it’s the only way. You have to trust me.”

Reigen pushes himself upright. For a moment, he tries to pull his extended leg back, but Mogami’s grip doesn’t loosen. “I’m not going to do that,” he says. “I can’t do that to Mob. That’s not fair to him— pushing him away like that for no reason.”

There’s no answer at first, only Mogami’s hand growing tighter and tighter, and Reigen is suddenly sure his ankle is going to break— but then the pressure’s gone, and he can’t be sure he didn’t imagine it. “Do you imagine you’re helping him with that?” Mogami asks, staring at him through his ink black bangs. “That by letting him kill you slowly, you’re doing him a favor?”

Something squeezes in Reigen’s chest, to the point of breaking. Reigen takes in a shuddering breath, trying to build up a response, when Mogami continues. “You’re deluding yourself, if you think that would do any good. You don’t want to face any consequence of this that’s unpleasant, that’ll make you seem bad in the eye of your student. Keeping him with you for the sake of your pride— I’m astonished at your selfishness, Arataka. Is neither the motivation of helping yourself or helping him enough?”

“I,” Reigen begins, only to find he is without answer. “I don’t—”

“I could easily explain the problem to him,” Mogami says, with a twist of his hand. “I’m sure he’d be interested to know about this. Do you imagine he’d take it well?”

The idea of Mob knowing makes Reigen scramble forward, suddenly desperate in his urgency. “No,” he says, voice almost a shout. “You can’t tell him that, you can’t—”

“If you don’t send him away,” Mogami says, words filling the space around Reigen, “then I’ll have to. It’s the only way to keep from letting this happen.” 

Reigen’s hands are pressed against the ground in front of him, supporting his weight. As he stares at Mogami’s impassive face, his arms begin to buckle. He slides to the ground, forehead pressing against the floor. Resting on his forearms is the only thing that keeps him from being wholly collapsed. There’s no answer that Reigen can give. Every option seems impossible.

When Mogami speaks again, his voice is gentler. “I know it’s not what you want,” he says, “but exposing yourself again to him would be unnecessarily cruel. You’d be letting him hurt you again. And you know he doesn’t want to hurt you, Arataka. It’s not like him to do that. You have to tell me you’ll do as I say.”

The words feel like a knife, dragging along the inside of his mouth. But there’s nothing else to be done. “I will,” Reigen says.

“Promise me.”

“Keiji, I will,” Reigen says. “Please, just…” His hands are shaking against his face. “Please help me.”

There’s some movement out of Reigen’s vision, some twitching motion. But Reigen can’t know what it means, because he can’t bring himself to look at anything. So all he has to go on is Mogami’s voice, reassuring in his ear. “Of course I will.”

It’s worse, somehow, than Reigen expects.

He can’t do it over the phone, or via text, or in any other cruel, distant method. Mob deserves better than that— he deserves better than all of this, Reigen knows. He deserves better than to ever know Reigen. So Reigen waits at his desk, seconds dragging by, long and agonizing. It both goes by too fast and not slow enough.

Mob comes in, like clockwork. Reigen can’t get his mouth to start working until Mob’s shrugged the bag off his shoulder, which feels unnaturally cruel— to let Mob get comfortable before Reigen delivers his ultimatum. “Oi, Mob,” he says. “Come here. I need to talk to you about something.”

Obediently, Mob walks over to the chairs Reigen gestures him to. If he notices the waver in Reigen’s voice, he doesn’t comment, only lets Reigen slide the mug of tea across the table to him. He retracts his fingers, and Mob picks up the mug. He holds it in both hands, the way he always does— as Reigen settles across from him, he’s suddenly struck by the possibility that the curse could eat that memory away too. Every strange, small, detail of Mob, consumed unknowingly by something of his own making.

“What is it, Shishou?” Mob asks, and Reigen feels everything within him sink. He has to say something. He has to carry this out.

“Mob,” he says, finally. His voice is too quiet and he can’t lift his eyes to Mob’s face. “There’s a lot to consider, you know, when running a business. Expenses, and policies, and what you’ll charge when someone asks for what and how you’ll operate your business, and, ah, where to place it…” 

He stops. The words are coming out too slow, shaky, too uncertain. But Mob doesn’t say anything. He waits quietly, for Reigen to get to his circuitous point. He clears his throat. “I guess I mean,” he says finally, “that you have to be careful. About a lot of things. Which is why…”

He could say nothing. He could let it go, and not hurt Mob this way, even if Mob’s curse silently ate him alive. Maybe that would be easier, than dismissing Mob for a reason he couldn’t ever know. Maybe if Reigen stayed selfish, and clung to Mob and let Mob hurt him, it would be easier. Even if it meant disappointing Mogami, even if it meant Mob’s curse killed him slowly. 

“Shishou, are you going to drink your tea?” Mob asks.

“Mob,” Reigen breaks out, “I’m formally releasing you from the bond that holds you here as my student.”

“Okay,” Mob says, without pause. Reigen stares at the floor, and waits. Mob watches him for a moment, then blinks. “Wait… Shishou—”

“See, that’s the thing here, Mob,” Reigen says. There’s no tremor in his voice now. He’s gotten the first words out, and now he can let the rest flow out, slow and steady and agonizing. “If I’ve released you from that bond, I’m not your master anymore. You can go home. Go do what other kids your age do. Play video games, or, or, study for classes. Whatever you want to do.”

He knows Mob is staring at him, but Reigen can’t look up at his face. He doesn’t want to see what’s waiting there. “But I want to stay here,” Mob says. “At the office. Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Reigen says, voice suddenly fervent. “No, Mob, you didn’t do anything wrong. I just… I’ve taught you everything I can teach you.”

 “I don’t think so,” Mob says, attempting to be valiant.

“Mob,” Reigen says, and he can hear the beginning of a crack in his voice. “Go home.”

There’s a long, empty silence. Reigen presses the side of his hands against his forehead, trying to keep himself steady as Mob says nothing. Then there’s the click of Mob gently placing the mug against the small table. He gets up, and walks across the room. There’s the shuffle of him scooping his book bag off the floor. And then a long silence, where he doesn’t do anything, and all Reigen can do is concentrate is on his own breathing.

The door opens, and shuts behind him. Mob is gone. It’s only Reigen in the office. Reigen and Mogami, leaning against the wall, watching in impassive silence.

The crows are everywhere, now.

Sometimes Reigen sees the decay and the black and everything else, and sometimes he doesn’t. He doesn’t know if it simply doesn’t bear note anymore, and he’s not noticing it. But the crows are always there. Their heads turn steadily to follow him when he walks down the street, going to and from the office.

Reigen, as always, sits at his desk and attempts to entertain clients, to cajole and ease their worries. Reigen can’t know anymore if he’s actually providing aid. He supposes that’s not any different than before, when he was content to just take people’s money and send them on their way. He still does the same thing. It makes no difference. Except more and more, people turn and leave before Reigen can convince them to stay. The words won’t click together right, and he can’t move fast or wild enough to get anyone to pay attention. And then no one comes at all. It’s just Mogami.

Mogami is always there when Reigen arrives. He never knows when he gets there, when he leaves, but he is there, and then he’s at Reigen’s apartment, and any other stop he makes. He watches. Reigen doesn’t know for what. The signs of his curse, he supposes. But nothing abates. Nothing gets better. Mogami always drifts around the room. It’s hard for Reigen to keep his eyes on him.

“Couldn’t you do something?” He asks Mogami finally, when a client walks out again. The heat of frustration makes the words slip out, before Reigen can think them through. “With these clients— you helped me before. Come on.”

Mogami sits on the sagging green chair angled against the wall, picking idly at the fray of his jacket. He doesn’t look up when Reigen speaks to him. “I think I’m doing quite a lot right now, actually,” he says, voice suddenly cool. “It takes a bit of doing to work on this curse, Arataka. I assumed you could handle your own clients.”

Reigen’s hands fling up. “That’s not— you know it’s not that simple, Keiji. I’m— with the curse, I can’t do anything with it. It makes it hard— hard to—” he can’t figure out a convincing response. It’s right there, hovering right out of the way of his shaking fingers. He settles them against his head, and they work through his hair as he tries to think. 

“Arataka,” Mogami says, “I cannot help you at all if you are not honest.”

Reigen’s hands stay in his hair. His arms are locked in place, along with the rest of his body, along with his jaw, clenched tight enough to break. He still can’t speak. This ridiculous, obvious thing that sits in front of them, and Reigen can’t speak it at all.

Mogami sighs. His legs unfold from underneath him, and he rises up. He’s only two steps away from Reigen, and he takes them with his usual measured pace. Then he settles his hands on Reigen’s shoulders. “It’s some kind of compulsion, I suppose,” he says. “This inability to be honest. You’re held captive by it as much as you hold anyone else.”

He smooths out the fabric of Reigen’s jacket shoulders, even though they bunch again with Reigen’s tightening shoulders. Then he moves up his arm and pulls Reigen’s hands away from Reigen’s head. Shame sickens Reigen to his core. He knows. They both know, they have all known. Reigen sways on his feet, and Mogami pulls him forward, idly tangling their fingers together. 

“Would you say,” Mogami says, voice thoughtful, “it could be a condition of your curse? But no, it’s always been this way. Sometimes the real problem is within ourselves.” Reigen’s face remains in Mogami’s shoulder, so he can’t see the contemplative fold of Mogami’s brow, but he can picture it— the way it looks when he arrives on some interesting thought experiment. “I’d imagine, Arataka, that’s what attracted your student’s curse, though. A defense mechanism to defend him from your manipulation, even if he’s not aware of it. There’s an irony in it, isn’t there?”

When Reigen doesn’t answer, Mogami sighs. “Well,” he says. “I suppose you may not appreciate it in the same way.”

The rat doesn’t come back. But a small white cat follows him home, eyes bright and inquisitive in its face. Its smile is satisfied as it winds its way between Reigen’s leg as he unlocks his door. Then it shoots inside before Reigen can block it from coming in.

“How would you define a parasite?” the cat asks Reigen when he shuts the door behind him. It’s sitting on top of his couch, thin white tail whipping around in the air. 

Reigen leans against the door until it clicks, then stays there. He means to turn the key in the lock, but he ends up staying stationary. “Little bugs that feed on something else,” he says. “Like tapeworms and stuff.”

“What a simplistic way of looking at things,” the cat says, flicking an ear. “You never try at all, really. You were supposed to be something, weren’t you? All those impressed teachers, your hopeful parents, a bright, promising future. It must still be there, underneath all this drudgery. Use that brain of yours and come up with something brilliant.”

 He doesn’t bother walking around the couch. Reigen falls over the side of it and lands face down in the creaking cushion. Maybe it’ll go away if he doesn’t acknowledge it, if he doesn’t give it his answer. Maybe if he waits long enough, he’ll wake up or fall asleep, and the issue will resolve itself in waking or dreaming. But instead, there’s pressure on his back. Four small, hard as rock paws walking up to his neck. He can feel the cat’s whiskers when it sniffs his hair.

“So think again,” the cat says. “Are parasites only microscopic organisms?”

“No,” Reigen says, after forcing his overtired brain into motion. “There’s like— those birds. That sit on big animals. It’s something that feeds off of others, nothing in return.”

The cat is kneading his back now. He can feel its needle claws through his shirt. “So where would you say you rank, Arataka? What classification of parasite are you?”

Reigen lets himself sigh into the couch, back rising as he breathes in and lowering as he breathes out. The cat stops to steady itself on his back. Then it sits, tail curling neatly around its feet— it brushes Reigen’s ear as it moves. “It’s interesting, Arataka, that you mention those birds. Sometimes, the animals they take advantage of will drive them away, indicating an awareness of their irritating nature. But other times— they do nothing. They let them sit there, riding off their strength and apathy to survive to a miserable, petty existence. They are too unimportant to even bother driving away.” The cat stretches its front feet out, bunching up Reigen’s back. “Isn’t that fascinating?”

Eventually, when Reigen is silent for too long, the cat humphs. It curls up between Reigen’s shoulder blades, nestling itself neatly in the narrow gap. Then it purrs, loud and obnoxious in Reigen’s ear. Reigen doesn’t remember waking up or falling asleep, but at some point the cat simply vanishes. Like it was never there in the first place.

“I’m not sure why you’re bothering,” Mogami tells Reigen abruptly. “Doing all this.”

It’s one of the slow parts of the day, although all parts of the day are slow parts of the day now. Reigen’s been slumping closer and closer towards the top of his desk all day, although now that Mogami’s speaking he realizes his forehead is actually against the top of it. He thinks about lifting his head, but it seems like too much work. So he asks, pressed against the desk, “what?” Paperwork tickles his face, moving with his breath.

“You’ve said it yourself,” Mogami says. “Your curse makes it impossible for you to work. Any clients who come in invariably leave again. You’re exhausting yourself, attempting to work outside your inability.”

Reigen blinks slowly against the desk. He can’t quite remember saying that. It sounds like something he could have said— something close to what he could have said, anyway. But there’s so many holes and absences in his memory, he has no way of proving he didn’t say it. Mogami remembers most things better than Reigen now, anyway. “I have to work,” Reigen says.

Mogami’s sitting next to him, on top of the desk. Reigen can see the curve of his fingers through the fringe of his hair. “You’re using it is a distraction,” Mogami says. “Or maybe it’s another compulsion. I suppose both are apt.” He adjusts the collar of Reigen’s jacket, smoothing over some fold so it lays more crisply. It itches against the back of Reigen’s neck. “For now, though, I think it would be wiser if you abstained. You’re wearing yourself out unnecessarily. It makes my job much harder than it needs to be.”

Eventually, Reigen nods, even if the movement is imperceptible. It doesn’t really matter, where he is— things are the same now. There’s always the rot and there’s always the dark and there’s always Mogami. The only thing moving him forward is his own habit, a rhythm that carries him without him realizing. “Keiji,” he says. “Why would I… What would I be distracting myself from?”

His hand is still running over Reigen’s collar. “What else?” Mogami asks. “Yourself.”

There’s a crow waiting outside the office when Reigen leaves, but he doesn’t wait to hear its riddles. He buries his head in his jacket and starts walking, as fast as he can. When he hears the flap of wings he starts running.

He refuses to look back, but he can still hear the sound of the wings multiplying, of hundreds of birds trying to overtake him. They are all sharp beaks and talons and angry cries. Exhaustion grabs at Reigen as much as anything else, but he runs. He runs as much as he can, as fast as he can, even when his legs are shaking and he feels like everything’s going to give out.

He gets to the apartment and takes the stairs two at the time, but the birds rush through the door behind him, spiraling up the staircase after him. Reigen finds his apartment door and yanks it open, turning to slam it shut behind him. He sees a mess of ebony feathers as it slams shut, and then the birds are screaming through the door.

“No thank you!” Reigen shouts back. “No, none of that, thank you—” the door thumps, and Reigen stumbles back and away from it. It keeps thumping, so Reigen scrambles across the apartment to find his closet. He yanks the door open and jams himself in next to his winter coat. Then he kicks the door shut behind him, bracing his feet against it as he curls up on the floor.

He can still hear the rush and clatter of wings, their cries, whatever they demand of him. Reigen presses his back against the closet, trying to steady his breath again. Suddenly, Reigen realizes he doesn’t know what would happen. If these birds caught him, if anything in this version of reality caught him, would anything really change? Would the illusion give way, or would the reverberations of psychic power prove enough to affect him? 

Reigen stays in the closet, long after the birds are gone. He sits in the dark. The crack of light moves across the floor and across Reigen’s feet. He watches it as the thunder in his chest refuses to abate.

Eventually, Mogami finds him there. 

The door opens and Reigen curls away from the light, from whatever awaits him outside the door. But then he peeks up through his fingers, and Mogami’s looking down at him. He’s completely in shadow, the light from the setting sun creeping around him.

“It’s you,” Reigen says, voice shaking. “God, I thought maybe the crows got in my apartment— figured out doors, or locks—”

Mogami’s pulling him off the floor, without acknowledgment of what Reigen’s saying. Words still trip out of Reigen’s mouth as his feet slide against the floor. He’s not standing under his own power. It’s only Mogami, holding him upright as he guides him across the apartment, to the couch again. He keeps ending up here, somehow. He can’t quite think about that when Mogami is frowning down at him, face inches from his own.

“Why were you in there?” He asks. 

Reigen blearily stares at him before the context of their conversation returns— the closet Reigen had trapped himself inside. “There were crows,” he says finally, in clarification.

“Crows.”

“Outside the apartment, I— when I left work yesterday…” He waves a hand, gesturing vaguely at the apartment door. “They followed me home, so I locked the door. I thought they might get in, then. So then I, hah…” The panic begins to build again at the memory. The sound, thundering right outside his door. “Hid. I hid. Keiji,” Reigen’s arms fold tighter across his chest. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

Mogami’s crouching in front of him, elbows resting on his knees as he looks up at Reigen. There’s something strange in his expression— worry, maybe. Worry he’s attempting to conceal. “Doing what?”

Reigen slides a little further down, legs bending deeper as he sinks lower in the couch. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful,” he mumbles, “I know— I know you’re doing what you can, I know…” He breathes out, voice shaky. “It’s not going to go away quickly, I’m making it difficult. But do you know? When it’s going to stop?”

Mogami’s hand is steady on Reigen’s leg, and without thinking Reigen puts his own on top. It’s trembling in comparison. Mogami doesn’t push his hand away, or move at all. “Arataka,” he says, voice gentle, “I don’t know what you mean. When is what going to stop?” 

There’s something awful, waiting for Reigen, on the other side of this conversation. He can feel it behind Mogami’s patient face. He can’t blink. Finally the words come together, bleeding out of Reigen’s mouth against his will. “The curse,” he says. He can barely hear himself speak. “On me. Keiji— you told me there was a curse…” 

The worry is visible now, a sad, resigned thing on Mogami’s face. Like what Reigen’s saying isn’t unexpected, but still hurts to hear in that strange melancholy way. “Ah,” Mogami says. He brushes Reigen’s bangs back with his free hand, fingers trailing across Reigen’s forehead, and suddenly Reigen wants nothing more than to not be there. “I knew,” Mogami says, not removing his hand, “That this would be hard on you. I suppose even deceiving yourself is easier than facing the truth for you.”

There’s no answer that can block out what Mogami’s saying. Still, Reigen tries. “No,” he says, the word barely audible to himself. Then, suddenly forceful, he says again, “no.” Mogami’s not holding him down, but suddenly he feels like he’s struggling to get away. “You did, you did say that, you said that Mob put a curse on me on accident, I had to send him away, Keiji, please—”

And now Mogami’s hands are holding Reigen’s shoulder, tight enough to break. “Arataka,” he says. “There’s no curse. I don’t know what’s happening to you. But it’s just you.”

There’s nothing. Nothing at all, that Reigen can say to this, even after days and weeks and months and years of always having more bullshit to spin. Hysteria drowns out any rational thought as he grips at Mogami’s wrists, either for support or to wrench them away. Some sort of panicked noise is escaping through his teeth as he draws his feet up, instinct demanding he get smaller and smaller under Mogami’s gaze. All he can manage is a strangled word. “Mob—”

“Your nature,” Mogami says, tone unspeakably kind, “was always going to drive him away.”

Reigen’s legs kick out at Mogami, and he pulls back as Reigen lunges away from him. Reigen knocks something loose from the coffee table. He doesn’t see what it is, but he hears the smash of it on the floor. “Get out,” he says, words beginning to turn to a howl. “Get out, get out, get out—”

He doesn’t wait to see if Mogami follows his order, instead scrambling for the balcony door. Mogami catches at him again, but Reigen wrestles his way out of his grip. As he yanks the sliding door open, he can hear the scream of the crows, and dread lurches through him. But remaining in the apartment is impossible. Reigen turns to shut the door. 

Mogami’s standing in his apartment. His arms are half out to Reigen, and he stands perfectly still in a dusty, lifeless room. He can’t see the rot spreading over every inch of the place, the way the furniture is disintegrating around him, because it’s not there. It’s just Reigen. It’s always just been Reigen. One last trick he played on himself. 

Reigen slams the sliding door shut. As soon as he does, there’s a creak of metal. As he steps back, he can see the apartment atrophy. The roof gives out first, shingles falling out and turning to dust. Then the planking, the interiors Reigen can’t quite discern, and then it’s down to the metal framing. Reigen watches it curl and rust, changing shape in seconds. Soon there’s nothing but Reigen, standing on the balcony, and the outline of his balcony door. The rest is gone. He’s left only a crumbling square of concrete, and a world gone completely black. 

There is a crow, sitting on the last remaining section of balcony.

He stares at it as the railing atrophies, curling as it rusts. The metal groans, and Reigen takes slow steps across the balcony. Reigen braces his hands against the railing. It’s cold under his fingers. He can feel it weakening.

The crow opens its beak and says, “do you believe in karma?”

“Fuck off,” Reigen says.

“It would be a neat explanation for your current condition,” the bird says. “Samskaras, creating phalas. Invisible effects becoming visible. It’s a curse in it’s own way, isn’t it, Arataka? A curse inflicted wholly upon yourself, created by your own misdeed.”

He leans against the railing, staring down at the black below. The cold metal bites through his shirt. It’s like ice against his ribcage. Next to him, he sees the bird shake out its wings, press them against its side again. The motion is wholly silent. “Do you think all of this is simply from your current life?” It asks. “All your lies, and deceit, coming back to you. I think it would be sufficient.” Its voice adopts the tone of a sermon, suddenly. Reigen’s heard the words it proclaims before, somewhere in the shattered halls of his memory. “Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be— a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad. He becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds.”

Reigen breathes in and looks away again. It doesn’t move like a bird, is the problem. The movement of its head is too smooth, too human. So are its eyes as it stares at Reigen. “You have nothing to say to defend yourself,” it says. “How unusual.”

“It’s not real,” Reigen says. “So. It doesn’t matter. What’s to defend myself against?” The words have an odd calming effect, once he’s said them— there’s nothing to hurt him except the fraying strings of his own mind. Reigen settles this thought in his chest, trying to calm the fast beating of his heart.

The crow mulls on this as Reigen leans against the railing. His head turns naturally, taking in a view that isn’t there. “I suppose you’re right,” the crow says eventually. “There’s nothing to prove.”

Reigen’s elbows press tighter against his sides. “That’s not exactly what I said,” he says.

“But I understand your meaning, Arataka,” the crow counters. “If this is in your head— if I am nothing but a product of your overwrought brain chemistry— then I am you. I know what you mean, perfectly. And what you mean,” its head straightens in a show of satisfaction, “is that there’s nothing to prove. There’s no one here to show artifice for. No one here for you to trick. Both of us know the truth. I am simply here to show it to you.”

“Okay,” Reigen mutters. “Sure. So, tell me the truth and let me go back to my apartment. I need to figure out what’s wrong with me now.”

“Ah,” the crow says fondly. “There’s that bravado. Trying to seem competent and brave, always, even when you cannot be. But of course. The truth. A novel concept for you.”

Reigen doesn’t quite remember turning to look at the crow, but he’s looking at it now. It’s unnaturally still. Its wings do not twitch, its feathers don’t move in any gust of wind— its whole body remains completely and totally stationary. The lack of motion is wholly arresting.

The crow opens its beak. “The truth,” it says, “is that there is no point in pretending you are not the worst sort of liar and fraud. The one that knows your actions are wrong, and carries them out anyway.”

His fingers are curling tighter and tighter around the railing. It must be tight enough to cut now— but there’s one last final edge of pressure that Reigen needs, that he can’t quite surpass. The bird cocks its head at him, and suddenly it’s birdlike again. But still it speaks, adopting that strange tone again. “And here they say that a person consists of desires,” it says, words becoming long and pronounced, soothing in their rhythm. “And as is his desire, so is his will, and as is his will, so is his deed, and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.”

Reigen’s legs aren’t enough to support him anymore. The railing is painful against him as he slides down to the ground. The calm that had crystallized begins to fracture around him again.

“So there is the truth,” the bird says. “Do you still wish to return to that life, Arataka? Can you say it’s worth it? I cannot imagine that you do.” It blinks, quick and birdlike at him, as he shakes against the atrophying bars of the railing. “Have you run out of words at last? I didn’t think it possible. Then I suppose we are at an end.” 

He knows what the bird will do. He can see it in its impossibly cold, black eye. But still, Reigen jerks back unprepared when it screams and flies into his face. 

Feathers brush his cheek, and for a moment Reigen is sure he can feel claws ripping him to pieces, long tears in his face made by savage talons and the cruel curve of its beak. It goes on forever, endless in its horror, until Reigen realizes there’s nothing happening at all.

Reigen’s hands are pressed against his face again. Under his fingers, sis face is stinging. He can feel the floor underneath him. It’s not the concrete of the outside. Reigen breathes in, and his body kickstarts to life in a horrible convulsion. His gasps grow deeper, taking in enough air to hurt. There’s too much sensation, suddenly— Reigen’s aware of every pressure against his skin, the blood pounding in his ears, the bone of his hip pressing into the floor. His breaths turn into sobs, constricted behind his teeth, until Reigen can gather enough air to stop again. He presses his lips together. Then he pulls his hands away from his face.

He sees, for a moment, his fingernails— raw and bitten still, but now with red matter collecting underneath the edges. Before Reigen can focus on what that means, his hands move to show his apartment. Everything is smashed and pulled apart— not from rot and decay, but from someone’s destruction. As Reigen stares down at his own, at the bruises and blood and splinters pressed into into his skin, there’s no way even he can deny himself. 

Reigen sits in the middle of his shattered apartment, the epicenter of a self inflicted storm.

For a long time, Reigen doesn’t move at all. He sits there, taking in the smashed up room, hands limp at his side. It’s strange and still, and Reigen almost fears that if he does anything to disturb its calm, something will come roaring out at him again. 

Anything that he’d been able to get his hands on had been destroyed. Reigen’s possessions are far from numerous, but there’s enough to make a wreck of the room. His bookshelf is upended, its contents scattered— his few favorites lay open on the floor, pages ripped out in ragged strips. He had a photo frame resting face down on the shelf that he always meant to stick some photo in. Its face is shattered now. All his drawers are yanked out, their contents emptied and destroyed when they could be. His desk lamp lays broken on the floor, next to where his computer was similarly discarded. Reigen’s not quite brave enough to analyze whether it’s ruined. His TV screen, though, is clearly broken— it looks someone broke straight through its surface, a black hole formed off center. The couch’s cushions are ripped, his dresser’s been pulled apart. Every cabinet door in his kitchen had been opened, with everything breakable methodically smashed on the floor. The potted plant, sitting by his balcony door, is smashed. Black soil spills out all over the floor.

“Well, this is a fine display,” Mogami says. Reigen looks up, and finds him by the door. He’s frowning at the shattered plates spilling out from the kitchen in front of the entryway. It’s created a maze, one difficult for Reigen to see a solution for. But then Mogami waves a hand and they all lift off the floor. He strolls through the cloud of floating shards, but doesn’t let them drop when he clears them. They stay suspended in air, like ornaments hung on invisible strings.

“I don’t remember,” Reigen begins. “Doing— it was like this suddenly. I don’t know what happened.” He looks down at his fingers again, down at the ground. There’s a perfect circle formed by the debris around him. Mogami’s foot appears in its circumference. Reigen stares at the hem of his pants leg. The green thread is fraying. 

Before he can do anything else, Mogami’s crouching in front of him, peering into his face with a critical eye. “Arataka,” he says. “What have you been doing?” 

His cold fingers rest against Reigen’s face. Once he feels Mogami trace his cheek, down to his jawline, Reigen can feel the minuscule scratches clawing up his face. They start on his forehead and repeat in erratic patterns across his face. “I don’t remember,” Reigen says. “I thought I said… Keiji… Keiji, how did you get into the apartment?”

“You need help,” Mogami says, like Reigen didn’t speak at all. Maybe he didn’t. Reigen’s suddenly not sure his mouth formed the words, with Mogami’s hand holding his jaw. “You’re lucky I’m here. You’re lucky I’ve been here. Who knows what you would have done?”

Reigen is suddenly certain he’s going to be here forever— in the middle of his apartment, Mogami’s face inches away from his, feeling small and sick and pointless. But then he stands, hand dragging Reigen’s chin up before he it slips away. There’s something red on Mogami’s fingers that he wipes away on his jacket. Then the apartment begins reassembling around him.

“You should be grateful I’m here to help,” Mogami says, voice flat as the furniture reassembles. “There’s nothing to hold anyone here at all, Arataka. You know that as well as I.”

Suddenly, Reigen’s seized by the need to be useful, to do anything to justify his presence. He scrambles to accomplish something, meaning to get to his feet but not quite making it off the floor. Anything he reaches slips away from him, thoroughly handled by Mogami before Reigen can even think of what to do. The only thing he ends up doing is grabbing onto a half full, half forgotten cardboard box that Reigen never finished unpacking, ages ago. He’d jammed it under his desk and thoroughly forgotten it and what it held. Some of its contents are scattered across the floor, old memorabilia that may as well be trash, but Reigen still begins scraping it inside with one shaky hand. His fingers run along the edges of a curled up poster as Mogami continues to speak. His words are beginning to turn into a low drone inside Reigen’s ear, and the stinging of a paper cut distracts him entirely. Reigen snaps his wrist back. Then he snatches the poster and, in a fit of impulse, shakes it open.

What’s printed on it makes everything stop.

The poster had been picked up years ago, on impulse in a thrift store that a college aged Reigen had wandered through with a trained, cool indifference. He held a developed interest in strange, eclectic things— odd knick-knacks, bizarre trinkets, all pointless stuff to make himself look like a more interesting person with a well detailed life. He’d shook open the poster in much the same gesture as he had now, and it had unfurled to reveal an old childhood obsession, long since forgotten. Reigen’s interests always reappear to him in a strange, circular pattern, and this one’s reappearance had amused him enough to buy it, explaining it as an ironic enjoyment. He’d forgotten it again, of course— much as he’d forgotten hours spent watching grainy VHS tapes in the dark, hours spent researching the death of a television psychic, all stretched out over the years of his life.

It’s a wonder, Reigen thinks, around the pounding hysteria in his own skull, that the poster hadn’t been destroyed. The printed image of Mogami Keiji, with promotional dates going back to before Reigen had been born, would have torn easily. In the end, it’s a cheap piece of trash that makes Reigen remember everything.

“You’re not listening,” Mogami says impatiently, and Reigen curls away from him, clutching the poster to his chest. “The least you could do, if I’m going to spend my time here, is listen.”

Reigen pushes for an argument, for any kind of rebuttal that could make sense out of what’s happening. But before he can find it, Mogami’s hand is clenching his shoulder. Reigen’s body turns to ice. The hand still feels real, even though it can’t be. The bent of fingers, the way the grip is strong enough to hold him captive— but it’s cold. It’s impossibly cold. Reigen can’t get away. He can feel Mogami begin to wrench him around, but before he can he turns his own head, desperate for some kind of control. Mogami’s eyes are black and impassive, and his skin is grey. He is just like the constant decay Reigen sees everywhere. Reigen stammers for something impressive to say. “What—” he tries again. “What are you doing here?”

Mogami’s mouth quirks into something sarcastic, and Reigen can feel the sting of his words before they even come out. “Isn’t that the question I’m posing for you now, Arataka?”

“No,” Reigen says, gathering strength. “No, I mean what are you doing here.”

There’s enough of a silence, as Mogami’s face beginning to change into something dark, that Reigen can continue. “It’s unusual, is all,” he says, trying to sound triumphant instead of terrified, “for a dead person to be wandering through my apartment instead of finding something more interesting to do with their afterlife.” And with that, he shakes the poster out again, offering the image of Mogami to Mogami himself.

It’s weak, pointless bravado, especially while Reigen’s crumpled under Mogami’s hand, while Mogami holds his apartment up with nothing but will. But his face is enough to keep Reigen from giving out— dark anger brews across Mogami’s face like a storm. Reigen knows he’s right. It’s a truth that settles in deeper than anything else, and the exhilaration of that is for a moment overwhelming. He almost begins to rise up before Mogami’s grip tightens. His hand pushes Reigen to the floor, pinning him to the earth with nothing but his flat palm. Exhilaration gives way to crushing panic, and any ground that Reigen might have gained is gone. 

“Do you feel clever?” Mogami asks, inches above Reigen’s ear. “Do you think you’ve won something, by making a discovery, purely on accident, that resulted only from your vices?”

“No,” Reigen says, voice desperate. “No, I don’t— Keiji, please—” the name is suddenly poisonous in his mouth as it’s pushed out, Mogami driving him further into the ground. He doesn’t know how it came to feel natural, how any of this seemed real or possible, but now it’s sickening. Reigen stops to draw breath, closing his eyes for a moment, only to snap them open again. Mogami’s pulling the poster from his fingers. Suddenly it’s more important than anything to hold onto it, the only piece of tangible evidence he has. If it’s gone, everything is. 

But it’s pointless. The poster is wrenched from his hand, and Reigen reaches hopelessly out for it as Mogami holds it up. He inspects it, eyes scornful. “I remember taking this photo,” he says. “It’s the only thing they used for years.” 

He tosses it away, and Reigen in his hysteria wants to laugh. He gets as far as his mouth going wide before Mogami’s eyes are back on him again, and any bewildered amusement dies. Reigen stares wild-eyed back up at him, heart pounding in his chest in a thunderous, horrifying rhythm. “Why?” He manages, voice barely making any sound at all. “Why did you do this?” 

Reigen’s not even sure what this is, this strange rewiring of Reigen’s entire life and memory, but it hangs impossibly over his head. The ghost of his childhood hero regards Reigen with pure disdain. Then he says, “because of the grudge around you. I intend to rid the world of it.” His hand moves, then, not to release Reigen but to settle more comfortably on his back. “You are what I hate more than anything, Arataka. Someone who does nothing but manipulate, and lie, and use, and use, and use.”

There’s nothing Reigen can say to this damnation. He’s trembling again, and he’s too aware of the high, pathetic whine in his voice. “But wh— why—”

He breaks off again. Mogami’s expression shifts. Reigen thinks it might be pity, the way you pity some dying thing that doesn’t know its own wretchedness. Then he sighs, moving close to Reigen again. His hand remains on Reigen’s back, but Mogami leans so he’s braced on his other elbow, bringing his head close to Reigen’s. His black hair brushes Reigen’s head. Reigen is close enough to decipher every fine line on Mogami’s face, but suddenly everything is lost to shadow. The pressure is suffocating.

“There is a certain type of scam,” he says, voice low, comforting, “that I am sure you are familiar with. You approach your prey and assert that you know them, that your knowledge and relation to each other are mutual, even while you are aware that both of you are perfect strangers. The laws of polite interaction make this possible— the other person isn’t willing to admit their faulty memory, so they play along. Soon they are quite convinced you are close, that you must be close. So they give you everything.”

A finger traces the shell of Reigen’s ear, moving strands of hair back. Reigen makes a panicked noise, somewhere in the back of his throat. Mogami’s smile is wry. “I think you thought you could never be tricked, Reigen,” he says. “I suppose I had a bit of an advantage on you. But still. There’s a satisfaction to it.” His face moves closer still to Reigen’s, even as Reigen tries desperately to curl away. 

“We could try again,” he murmurs. “Remove your unfortunate discovery— you were never to know, really. But then there’s an advantage to this, too. What do you think?”

Reigen makes no answer. Mogami sighs. “Well,” he says. “I suppose either way, we’re done here. Goodbye, Arataka.”

And then there’s nothing.

“I thought that guy told you to beat it.”

“He said I wasn’t his student anymore,” Mob corrects. “…And not to come back to the office. I guess that’s pretty much the same thing.”

The street is empty today, a product of the overcast sky. Mob is the only one walking its length, all the way from Salt Middle to Spirits and Such. Dimple floats along next to him, the ooze of his aura brighter than anything else on the street.

Dimple sighs at Mob’s response. “And you’re still going there. Come on, Shige, take advantage of the free time like a normal middle schooler. Go play games with your friends, or study. Talk to girls. Or…” He drifts closer again, something sly and confidential in his gaze. “We can work out something to do, you know. Something worth your time…”

Mob knows how the rest of this pitch goes, so he stops listening. Instead, Mob checks his phone, again, to make certain that Reigen hadn’t responded. Each day, he’s sent a text asking if he was wanted back today— if Reigen’s reversed his decision on whatever had caused him to send Mob away in the first place. There’s no answer. There’s not even acknowledgment. Mob pauses to wonder if his texts are going through. He tabs through the text messages, up to when Reigen’s replies stopped. His eyes remains on the last message, silent and contemplative.

It doesn’t make sense.

He’s had enough time to think it over. Mob’s picked up that day and inspected it enough times to look at each angle, consider every vague stray possibility, and as far as he could see there isn’t any reason for his abrupt removal at the office. He hadn’t been slacking on his duties. He hadn’t abused his power against Reigen’s wishes. He hadn’t gotten more expensive. He’d stayed the same. Everything had been the same, except for Reigen, and his sudden termination of Mob’s employment there.

There’d been enough distance, now, for the sting to be gone, leaving only something unsettling sitting in his stomach. Maybe it’s a test, of some kind. To see what Mob would do. Except Mob lacks anything to indicate to him what he should do, besides what Reigen commanded, which is impossible. Maybe he’s done something to frustrate Reigen. But then, why wouldn’t Reigen tell him, instead of cutting him off? 

The only option that Mob can see, then, is that Reigen is hiding something. Something bad enough to make him push Mob away.

“Shige, are you listening to anything I said?” Dimple’s voice is loud enough to get his attention again. “Reigen doesn’t want your help anymore. Why waste your time trying to win that guy back?”

“I don’t think it’s like that,” Mob says without stopping. “I wanted to respect Shishou’s wishes, but… I think there’s something wrong. So I want to find out what.”

Dimple’s quiet, and Mob finds he’s arrived at the door of the office. The open sign for Spirits and Such is off. The lights are dark inside. Everything is silent, completely devoid of life. Mob stands below the first step, looking up at the door.

He begins to take the stairs, and suddenly, Dimple’s in front of his face. “Shige,” he says, words suddenly hesitant, “I get you’re worried for the guy, but… I think it’s better not to mess with it. He’s probably got some personal problem, yeah? Better to stay out of it. He’ll come crawling back to you, for sure.”

Mob stares at him. His aura is flaring overbright, moving in an agitated way. Dimple grins at him still. “You haven’t been hiding what’s wrong from me, have you, Dimple?” Mob asks. His voice is low.

“Me?” Dimple pshaws, waving a hand he creates for the purpose. “Come on, Shige. You know I wouldn’t— hey—” 

He flows to the side as Mob continues up the steps, picking up speed until he’s at the top. Then he stops, hand hesitating over the doorknob. 

“If Shishou really doesn’t want me around,” he says, finally, “I won’t bother him anymore after this. But if something’s wrong…” He grips the doorknob. “I’m going to help him.”

Dimple doesn’t follow him into the office, so Mob opens the door alone. It’s dark, and for a moment he’s convinced his errand was pointless. Reigen’s not even there. But then something moves, changing the light peeking through the blinds. Someone’s standing behind Reigen’s desk.

“Shishou,” Mob says.

“Oi, Mob,” says Reigen in answer. “I thought I told you not to come back.”

Something’s coiled around his arm. Mob can’t quite make it out in the dark, but it’s long and fraying, and he holds it taut in his hands. “I know,” he says. “But I wanted…” He trails off. He’s not sure how to word it all— the strange, half formed worries, developing slow in the back of his mind. “I guess I wanted to make sure,” he decides on, voice unconvincing to his own ears.

Reigen watches him. Then he sighs, chest collapsing in as he does. He lets go of what he’s holding with one hand, instead reaching out behind him to grab the back of his chair. It creaks under his weight as Reigen lands in it. “Mob,” he says as he does so. “Mob, Mob, Mob.”

The name rolls around in Reigen’s mouth like a marble, and he lets what’s still wound around his arm slip off onto the desk. It’s a rope, Mob sees now. For a moment, it looks like a snake, coiled perfectly on his desk. Mob stares at it, fascinated. But then he realizes Reigen is watching him. His master’s fingers arrange to form a triangle.

“Why are you bothering with this?” Reigen asks, interrupting the silence he created. “I’ve sent you away. It’s been fun, Mob, but it’s over, now.”

The ticking clock is loud in the silence. Mob thinks about it. “Well,” he says, eventually, “I think maybe you didn’t mean to. I think there’s something else going on, maybe… That you’re not telling me. I guess I can’t really be sure. But I— don’t think you would send me away for no reason.”

“Ah, ah,” Reigen says, waving a hand. It breaks the perfect shape he’d made. “You’re looking for reasons, then. That’s an easy fix. Mob—” He leans forward on the desk, elbows pressing in. His smile is wide and genial, and slightly crooked at the corners. Mob only sees this smile sometimes, when he’s making a particularly good deal and he’s feeling clever about it. “I don’t need you anymore. I can do well without you.”

 For a while, Mob can’t work up an answer to this. There’s something twisting around in his stomach. He think it might be because of the words, because they hurt, but that’s not quite it. There’s something else that’s making his lungs constrict. “I don’t think that’s right, Shishou,” he says.

Reigen’s smile only gets wider. He leans into one hand, beaming down at Mob. “You need to be more careful in the future, Mob,” he says. “I know what you really want to believe, of course— that I cared about you as a mentor, that I wanted to teach you all about your powers. But I only needed something to give this business some momentum.” He pushes up from the desk, and ends up standing in triumph. “And now I’ve got it, so I’m cutting down on unnecessary expenditures.”

“You only pay me three hundred yen a day,” Mob says.

He laughs. There’s too much teeth in it. Mob sees them flash in the dark. “Every bit counts, Mob,” he says. Then he stops. Something satisfied settles in his face. Everything is much too still for it to feel like Reigen. “In the future, Mob, you should use your powers for yourself. Keep charlatans like me from taking advantage of your kind nature.”

Mob stands rock still in the middle of the room. Reigen watches him for a moment more, then sighs. He begins gathering up the rope again, length by length. Mob watches it tighten around his arm. 

Reigen holds it up and inspects it. Then he shakes a length loose again, turning to the side. Suddenly, he’s in the light, and Mob can make out thin strips of red on his face, like cat scratches all across Reigen’s cheekbones. “Are you still here, Mob?” He asks, conversationally. He doesn’t look up from the rope. “This is my private business, you know. I can have you ejected if you want.”

“You must be a powerful spirit if I can’t see you,” Mob says, “but I’m still going to exorcise you.”

His head turns, and his expression is cast in shadow. Mob can’t make out anything on his face, but for a glimmer in his eye. Then Reigen’s head moves again, and the calm, easy smile on his face is replaced with something cold. “And what makes you say that?” He asks. His voice is cold, too cold for anything Reigen would ever say.

“Everything,” Mob says. “Leave his body now.” Something cold is building up in Mob. He feels frozen over, like he’s turning into ice that’s going to crack. He raises his hand, and aura begins to move through his fingers.

The spirit exhales. “I’m not going to do that, Mob,” he says. “I’ve worked hard to get this far. To get past you… Well.” He turns Reigen’s body again towards Mob, and his stance is totally different. Reigen can’t have gotten any taller, but still he looms. “It was quite a challenge. You made this petty man much more complicated than he should have been.”

Something reaches towards a breaking point in Mob. He can feel it building, somewhere behind his sternum. “Stop talking,” he says. “If you won’t leave, I’ll make you.”

He sniffs. Every noise the spirit makes inside Reigen’s body is wrong- it’s all over delicate and controlled. It’s not like the grandeur Reigen lives in, that makes Mob feel like he’s always speaking to an audience of thousands, but it’s still a show. “This is pointless,” the spirit says. “Everything I said, Mob— it may not have been your master, but it’s true. Walk away. You’re better off without this man. You must know how he uses you.”

“I don’t care,” Mob says. “I’m going to exorcise you now.” 

And then lets his power go, in an explosive rush that even he can feel. It’s enough to rupture the air around him, but the barrier that comes up around Reigen doesn’t tremble. Mob lets out more, more than he ever dares to use when Reigen stands near. Then it buckles. Reigen’s pupils contract to pinpricks, and the barrier cracks— but then it reforms. Like Mob never touched it at all. 

The spirit tilts Reigen’s head til his neck pops. “All right,” he says, around an exhale. “I suppose there’s no other way to do this, then.”

Something pounds inside Mob’s ear as he stares at the barrier, shimmering in the dark. Reigen’s mouth spreads wide, wide, wide. The rope falls to the floor around his feet.

“Let’s begin,” the spirit says.