Chapter Text
ii/ii
I’ll be over after six. Got a late lecture and then a seminar.
Okay, see you then. I’m out on a job.
Reigen types his reply and snaps his phone shut, slipping it into his pocket. He feels it vibrate against his thigh as Mob sends him another message but he doesn’t take it out to check it. Likely something along the lines of be extra extra careful, anyway. He appreciates the concern but this is pretty routine, he was doing this sort of call-out before Mob even wandered into his office all those years ago. With varying levels of success, of course, but that won’t be the case today: he’s still got plenty of Mob’s residual power teeming to the very tips of him. He feels like he could tangle with something pretty powerful and still have plenty to spare. He can almost hear Mob scolding him in that deadpan way of his and smiles. Serizawa is right: this aura is definitely Mob’s, form-fitting, familiar. It feels like he’s right next to him, wrapping his arms around him, keeping him safe. Mob might be worried but he is not, not when he feels like this.
The apartment building is not unlike his own, flat and square and bland. It has three floors and worn railings and peeling greyish paint. The client lives on the second floor so he heads up the stairs, taking them slowly. He can’t sense anything overwhelmingly off about the place, certainly nothing malevolent, but then he’s not as acute as Mob or Serizawa. Maybe he should have brought Dimple with him after all.
The client is a middle-aged woman named Yamamoto who lives with her teenaged son; however, she is not the only resident awaiting him in the apartment. There are two young housewives, a man in his mid-forties and an elderly couple. All of them have the same complaint – doors banging, things being moved or knocked over, a general feeling of creeping cloying coldness that passes through.
“At first I thought it was a bad draught,” Yamamoto explains. “We all did – maybe there was a problem with one of the walls in the building. But then…”
She looks around the small living room. The other residents all have about the same expression on their faces. It’s the one Reigen recognises as ‘not wanting to be thought of as crazy’. Pretty common. People come into his office and whisper their problems to him like they don’t really want to be heard.
“Did you see something?” he prompts. “Any of you?”
A lot of head-shaking.
“Hear something?”
More head-shaking, exchanging of looks. Clients like this, the sort that feel embarrassed about even thinking their problem might be something supernatural, are extremely frustrating. He already feels like an outsider, sitting amidst them all in this small neat square of sofas and coffee tables. He’s only here because they’re desperate. They wouldn’t entertain his type otherwise, he realises that.
“It’s more… just a feeling,” Yamamoto says eventually, looking at the coffee table. “I can’t really describe it. It’s not there all the time, it comes and goes.”
“What kind of feeling?” Reigen pushes. He’s never going to get anywhere with these people if he can’t get even a basic straight answer. “I assume it’s not a good one.”
“Of course it’s not,” the elderly man says coldly. “We wouldn’t have asked you to come here otherwise.”
Reigen, of course, does not let this tone bother him in the least. He’s used to it.
“Does it make you feel nervous?” he asks. “Anxious – like you’re being watched?”
A pause as they all consult with each other – and then nodding.
“I see.” He clocks the windows, the types of doors. They’re all new-ish, last twenty years or so. “How old is the building?”
“Fifty years, maybe?” says one of the housewives.
“I think it’s more like sixty,” the mid-forties man adds. “End of the 1950s, I’m sure.”
“Is the plumbing original?”
Now there’s a baffled silence. The elderly man squints at him. “What difference does that make?”
“Well, I’m not ruling out a ghost or spirit of some description,” Reigen explains, “but the feeling you’re describing is not uncommon in older buildings. It’s easy to chalk it up to a haunting but often it has a less-interesting explanation.”
He’s speaking from experience; several “hauntings” in old buildings they’ve been summoned to over the years have simply been cases of old pipes.
“There’s something called infrasound, just below the hearing range of humans, scientifically-proven to cause feelings of uneasiness and fear. A common complaint is the idea of being watched.”
“And what about the things moving?” asks one of the women. “Being knocked over?”
“As I said, I don’t want to completely rule out a ghost,” Reigen says, “but the sound is usually caused by vibrations in old plumbing, industrial machinery, that sort of thing. Even minor earthquakes – enough to knock over your belongings – can cause the sound to be emitted.”
The old man straightens in his seat. “I told you it wasn’t a ghost!” he needles at his wife.
“Well, we just thought it best to check,” she replies softly.
“If that’s really the case then we don’t need to pay you,” the middle-aged man says, like people haven’t tried this shit on Reigen a thousand times.
“If it’s not a ghost then you’ll be paying a plumber,” Reigen replies pleasantly. “And they won’t be as cheap as me.” He gets up, addressing Yamamoto. “May I have a look at your boiler?”
“O-of course.” She rises, beckoning. “This way.”
The others have lost interest, rising too, beginning to leave. He’s glad. If there really is a ghost, the gathering has likely done nothing but make it conceal its presence. He follows Yamamoto to a small closet, which she unlatches to allow him to see the boiler. The pipes do look pretty old, as he suspected. He taps them a bit and listens, Yamamoto standing behind him with her hands clasped together. He doesn’t have the feeling they’re describing – he has definitely felt it in other old buildings – but it’s not impossible that the plumbing is the problem.
“What do you think?” Yamamoto asks.
“The pipes are old,” Reigen says. “Did you speak to the landlord about your concerns? The draughts, for example.”
“Well, yes. He said he would come out to look at it.”
“And did he?”
“I’m not sure. We don’t see very much of him. He runs three other buildings.”
Reigen nods. “What kind of things get moved or knocked over? Are they in specific rooms?”
“I’m not sure about my neighbours,” Yamamoto says, “but my son’s room was the problem in here.”
“Was?”
“He won’t sleep in there anymore,” she says. “He sleeps on a futon in my room. He still uses it to get dressed or study.”
“And he’s complained of the same issues?”
“Not exactly. He doesn’t like to talk about it much.”
“Will you show me the room?”
“Of course.”
Her son’s room is small and square, typical of a teenaged boy. The bed, as she explained, is unslept in, and the desk is piled with books, as are the shelves. There’s a lot of manga with bright spines and a few posters on the walls. It’s nothing out of the ordinary; even when he closes his eyes and really concentrates, focuses on nothing else, he can’t sense anything. He looks again at the desk. There’s a photo frame face-down on the surface. Yamamoto sees him looking and frowns, crossing the floor to it.
“This… is one of the things that keeps getting knocked over,” she says softly, lifting it. Reigen sees that it’s a small family photo of Yamamoto, a young boy who must be her son and a man in a suit, all smiling.
“My husband,” she says.
“Is he at work?”
“He left us.” Yamamoto’s voice is very quiet. “It was a few years back. I don’t know where he went. He gave no explanation.” Her eyes widen. “It… couldn’t be him, could it?”
“You’d know if your husband had died, even if you were estranged,” Reigen says. “Legally you would need to be informed.”
“I… I suppose so.”
“How did your son take it?” Reigen pauses. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Not well. A lot of the arguments Kenji and I had were over him. What prep school he would go to, his grades, that sort of thing. I… I’m not proud of it.”
Reigen nods. “And… what’s your relationship with your son like?”
“A bit strained,” Yamamoto admits. “It has been ever since his father left. I suppose he’s at that awkward age, too…”
“How old?”
“Just turned fifteen. He was twelve when Kenji left.”
“Not a good age,” Reigen agrees absently, looking around the room.
“It’s not just us!” Yamamoto insists, like she’s afraid he’ll think she’s just making it all up. “I-I mean, it’s not just Michiya acting out–”
“No, I understand. There’s the matter of your other neighbours, to begin with. All of them have the same complaint. That’s why I thought it best to start with the plumbing.” He rubs at his neck. “Please think hard, Yamamoto-san. What else might you and your neighbours have in common?”
Yamamoto frowns. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Something else that might make you all a target.” He looks again at the photograph. “For example… do all of your neighbours have children?”
“Oh.” Yamamoto blinks at him. “Yes, they do. “The Yamadas have two grown-up children, Honda and Nakamura both have babies and Eijiro has a daughter somewhere. He’s divorced.”
“I see,” Reigen says, nodding.
“Do you think that’s the connection?” The phone starts ringing and Yamamoto bows her apology to him. “I’m sorry, I just need to get that.”
“Take your time.” Reigen waves her off, watching her shuffle out of the room. When she’s gone, he tries to concentrate again, probing with his borrowed powers. It’s a little bit easier without her presence to tangle in his search. This case is a weird one and he’s starting to wish he’d left it to Serizawa and taken the other job. He wonders if he could call Mob. He’d be annoyed but he’d probably come…
No. He clenches and unclenches his fists. This is nothing. He’s got borrowed powers and a brilliant brain. He can figure this one out himself. There’s no need to bother Mob.
He goes to the desk and appraises the contents of it. There’s really nothing out of the ordinary. Even the family photo, even with the unfortunate context, is perfectly normal. Maybe it really is the plumbing and he begins to wonder if the pipes run behind any of these walls, that might explain why sleeping in here is so unbearable—
Wait. He can feel a sudden spike in Mob’s powers, prickling at him, hackles raising. Pinpointing spirits precisely is still pretty much beyond him but he’s getting that feeling now, too – a strange strained sadness, the weird fear that he’s being watched. It’s so sudden, so oppressive, that it makes him rule out pipes completely. A train, perhaps? That might explain the fleetingness, the vibrations big enough to knock things over. He goes to the window to look but there’s too many buildings in the way so he takes out his phone to check if there’s any train lines that run near this building. He hears a distinctive tak as he’s looking down at his screen, sees the photo face-down once again when he raises his head. He moves back to the desk to set it upright again but finds that he can’t lift it. There’s resistance, as though someone – or something – is holding it down. That cold terror is draining through his entire body, cloistering, suffocating, and Mob’s powers are going crazy, lifting his hair off his forehead. There’s something in this room with him, no doubt about it. He can’t see it but he can sense it, clear as day. The desk trembles, a few books toppling, and he swears he sees something move in his peripheral as he holds it down. He turns, breathing hard against the hideous feeling of dread over taking him, trying to shake it off as Yamamoto hurries back into the room.
“I heard something fall!” She seems startled. “Are you alright, Reigen-san?”
“I’m fine.” Reigen lets his eyes dart around the room, searching every corner. “There is definitely something in here but…”
Yamamoto clutches at her skirt. “But what?”
“I don’t think it originates from this room,” Reigen finishes. The feeling is subsiding as he speaks. “What I mean is, I don’t believe your son’s room is haunted.”
“Then where is it coming from?” Yamamoto asks.
“I’m…” Reigen exhales, his gaze settling in the furthermost corner of the ceiling. Mob’s powers are calling his attention to it, straining after the vanished shape that he saw only for a second. There’s a small thin wardrobe in this corner, stretching right up to the low ceiling. “Yamamoto-san, do you mind if I move that wardrobe?”
“Oh.” Yamamoto blinks. “I-I suppose not.”
“Thank you.”
It’s extremely light, made of thin plywood, and he’s able to push it out away from the wall by himself. A foot or so is all he needs to see the wall behind it. There’s a huge stain, ugly yellowish-brown-black like a bruise, spreading from the corner and all the way down the wall. He doesn’t know if it’s water-damage or what, only that it looks like it’s been there for a while. He beckons to Yamamoto, who comes to look.
“Did you know this was here?”
She seems horrified, covering her mouth with her hands. “N-no, I didn’t!”
Reigen looks up at the ceiling. His borrowed powers are still pointing to this like the arrow of a compass. “What’s above you?” he asks. “Another apartment, I’m guessing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who lives there?”
“There… there was an elderly man but I think he must have moved out. I haven’t seen him for a while.”
Oh jeez. Reigen’s stomach sinks. “Heard anything?”
“No.”
“Did anyone, you know… go and check on him?”
“None of us really knew him,” Yamamoto says, looking pale. “He kept himself to himself, he never seemed to get any visitors…”
“I see.” Reigen takes one last look at the ceiling and steps away. “I’m going to go upstairs and look. We may need to call the police.”
He lets himself out of Yamamoto’s apartment and goes to the stairs, ascending to the final floor. Well, this afternoon is turning out to be eventful. It’s been a while since he’s come across a dead body, anyway. He puts his hand into his pocket and closes it around his phone, debating once more if he should call Mob. He exhales, shakes the urge off. This is hardly the most dangerous job they’ve – he’s – ever been on. He’s not an expert on sizing up spirits, not the way he can with people, but the presence in Yamamoto Michiya’s room didn’t feel especially powerful. Resentful, yes, and angry – but not, you know, Mogami or anything.
He goes to the door of the apartment directly above Yamamoto’s. The paint is worn away and there are a lot of dead insects around the light on the walkway but otherwise it seems ordinary. To the naked eye, at least; now that he’s right in front of it, Mob’s powers amplifying his own abilities by pretty much 100%, he can definitely sense the dim aura of raw threat emanating from the beyond the old wood. He rings the doorbell but it just makes a gargled buzzing sound that cuts off halfway through. Deceased batteries, he concludes, and bangs on the door instead. He does, of course, get no answer, which is about what he was expecting. He’s never seen a ghost answer the door, anyway. He tries the handle out of sheer audacity, expecting it to be locked, but it turns and creaks open a little, stopped by the pile of junk mail on the doormat. The light of the day spills in a thin sliver down the dark hallway beyond. He steps over the threshold and into the silent stillness of the apartment, the hush floating atop the innards like a layer of fat. It has the definite frozen staleness of death. He bends down and picks up the mail, stacking it neatly into one pile, sifting through it. It’s all junk, flyers and ads and coupons, though he does come across one thing with an actual address on it that matches the apartment. It’s addressed to a Minagi Gendo.
He takes his phone out of his pocket as he moves into the apartment, flipping on the torch. The blueish beam plies over the narrow hallway, sweeping like a lighthouse he moves it from side to side. The aura is definitely present, prickling at his intrusion, but Mob’s power reacts to it on its own, shielding him with a barrier that the spirit has no hope of breaking through. Whether this is because of the extra energy Mob bestowed on him or because Mob’s power is just naturally protective, he isn’t sure. All he knows is that’s he’s in no immediate danger from this place or the restless spirit that dwells within. He enters the living room, finding a light switch with his torch and flipping it on. All the curtains are drawn, which explains the darkness in the middle of the day, and there’s a layer of dust on every surface, greyish mouse-fur fuzz that clings. There’s a half-empty glass of water on the low table, the surface swimming with gunge as thick as whipped cream. The room is not unlike his own in both size and layout, sparsely furnished, something that sits uneasily in him with a curdling uncanniness. He puts the stack of mail on the table as he passes, feeling the presence needling at him but with caution, cowed by his barrier. Without words he can feel it take on the shape of questions, why are you here, what do you want. He could ask the same.
The television, a small boxy thing from the eighties, probably as old as him, is unplugged but his reflection distorts as he passes it, jumping like a video tape. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck go up, drawing the cloak of Mob’s power more tightly around him. He steps away from the TV and hears glass crack beneath his heel. Looking down, he moves his foot to see splinters of clear glass from the face-down photo frame half under the table. He crouches down and winches it out, turning it over.
It’s similar to the one in Michiya’s room, although clearly it is decades older, faded in the middle, bleaching outwards like a dying sun. It depicts a man about Reigen’s age, a woman in traditional dress and a young boy, perhaps ten or eleven years old, in a school uniform. He would take a confident stab at the man being Minagi Gendo; the others, probably a wife and son, perhaps a sister and nephew, maybe a friend. Long absent, any which way. He rubs his thumb over the edge of the frame, feeling the grit of ground-in dust.
Something in the room changes. That numb icy dread descends on him again and there’s a sudden increase in pressure, massive, pushing against the walls of his barrier. He concentrates on maintaining it, feeling the whole apartment shake beneath his feet, all the old belongings dislodging dust as they tremble and fall. This is an attempt to expel him, crack his shield like a nut, and while it’s about as effective as the wind trying to crumple a car, he realises he’d be in trouble if he wasn’t toting Mob’s powers today. Mob still lives at home with his family and doesn’t stay over with him every night, after all. Reigen finds himself extremely glad – as the TV screen cracks loudly – that he talked Mob into coming home with him last night, not that he needed much persuading. Now Reigen just needs to pinpoint the ghost and wrangle these powers into exorcism mode before they’re all burned up protecting him.
He pulls the power to his core, concentrating on centring it. Honestly meditation techniques are just as useful in this line of work, something he’s observed many times before (usually at more opportune moments than this, admittedly). It settles like a cool orb in the middle of him, drawing towards his vital organs, the pounding of his heart. He still can’t fix on the source, it’s too much for him to concentrate on all at once, but Mob’s power – even residual – is so much stronger than the spirit. He pushes outwards and the pressure breaks off with a snap, the malevolent force receding. It tears away through the apartment with a violent gust, shaking and unsettling everything in its path. This is fine by Reigen, who can now follow it to the source. He pulls his power back, doesn’t let the shield drop as he moves through the apartment. He knows the thing will have him if he lets it down for even a moment. He walks down a short corridor, dark and grimy, no windows, to the final room. There is no door, only a thin curtain that separates it from the hallway. It crackles with unpleasant energy as he pushes it aside. The room beyond is so dark he can barely see, dense with that malignant aura, thick as fog. It smells of old rot, sour and damp. This is the bedroom, the curtains drawn tight to block out the world that turns outside. He knew he was right: the futon is in the middle of the floor, the covers draped over a thin frail shape. In the bleakness he can’t see much else.
The spirit is unsettled by his entrance, trying to scare him as he feels for the light. It bangs things, knocks things over, makes the floor and ceiling shake. Reigen is unfazed, having seen worse from Mob when he’s in a bad mood, moving further into the room until he finds the switch. At last his fingers slide over it and he flips it on. It takes a moment, buzzing and flickering, but at length the room fills with a dull yellowish glare. It’s sparse, just as filthy as the rest of the apartment, the edges of the futon scattered with empty packages, tissue boxes, bottles, used bandages. His eyes fall on the old man and he has to avert them for a moment, his stomach giving a queasy lurch. He takes a deep breath, composing himself, and looks back.
Minagi Gendo has been dead for a while. Most of his emaciated body is covered by the blanket but his head is still visible, skeletal and gaunt on the pillow. The cloistered conditions of the apartment have given his decay a strangeness, the corpse rotting slowly, drying out like a mummy. There are no flies, no maggots – just that weird hideous stain that spreads beneath the futon and down the walls of the apartment beneath. That’s that mystery solved.
They will need to call the police, of course, though it looks like the old man died in his sleep and no-one noticed. There’s a word for this that escapes him right now; besides, it’s something about that that Reigen just doesn’t really want to think about so the first thing he does is move around the futon, stepping carefully over the debris, and kneel down next to Minagi’s body. He takes the edge of the cover and pulls it quickly over the corpse’s head, covering it completely. As soon as he does so, the wind dies, the rattling stops. He doesn’t lower the shield but he senses a lull in the hostility. At the head of the futon, the source gathers and solidifies into a shape. He can’t see spirits as clearly as Mob, whose whole world is populated by both the living and the dead; to him the ghost is only the shape of a man, just bordering on the form of human-ness. He knows that it is Minagi Gendo. He puts his hands flat on his knees and doesn’t move.
“You can stop now,” he says softly, “don’t you think?”
He lets his gaze go over the rubbish, the crumpled cartons, the stained ashtray full of wizened cigarette butts near the pillow. He thinks about how the fridge must be full of rotting food, about the nature of the stain that has leaked into the Yamamotos’ apartment, piss and shit and oozing fluids from the break-down of a human body, about the fact that it will be someone’s job to clean all this up. How did not a single person notice?
“Nobody came,” Minagi says. It’s a thin rasp, barely audible. “Never once. It’s been years since anybody came.”
“I don’t think that’s the fault of the Yamamoto family,” Reigen replies. He hasn’t got Mob’s patience; he wishes he understood them the way he does but he can’t. “Or anyone else in this apartment block, for that matter.”
“Nobody came,” Minagi rasps again. The room shakes once more but Reigen doesn’t flinch. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe not,” Reigen agrees vaguely, though it unsettles him, somehow. He pauses for a moment. “You have a son.”
The spirit stops. “How do you know? Did… did he send you here?”
“No. There’s a picture in your living room. The man is you – the boy must be your son. Estranged, I assume. That’s why you haunt the families in this block who also have children.”
He’s expecting a retaliation to this, another flare of temper tantrum, but Minagi doesn’t argue.
“They take it for granted,” he says. “Especially the Yamamoto boy. He won’t even speak to his father on the phone. He acts as though he doesn’t exist.”
“So you terrify him. He won’t even sleep in that room.”
“It’s no less than what he deserves.”
Reigen exhales, rolling his shoulders. Mob would be able to make this ghost understand why doing this is only hurting himself; he exudes a natural gentleness, a sensitive understanding, as insistent as a tsunami. Reigen can only think about it practically – that hating Yamamoto Michiya is only a projection, presumably, of Minagi’s feelings towards his own son, that haunting him isn’t going to change anything about his own circumstances. Logic like this seems to be beneficial only to those still living, people who can actually make a positive change to their lives. It would be wasted on Minagi Gendo, whose entire existence has warped and twisted around this misplaced malignance, tethering him to the apartment in which his remains have festered for months. It’s clear to Reigen that the ghost can’t stay here any longer.
“This isn’t doing you any good,” he says bluntly. “I’m going to exorcise you.”
“I know,” Minagi says. “I can sense how powerful you are. I’m not going to fight you.”
Reigen shifts on his knees. “Do you mind?”
“No. I can’t leave this building otherwise.”
Reigen nods. This is common of ghosts who make a nuisance of themselves – they’re usually trapped. Exorcism is often a relief.
“I’ll inform the police,” he says. “They’ll notify your son and any other family members. You’ll get a proper burial.”
“No-one will come.”
“Your son will come, I’m sure.”
“...I hoped he would come here.”
Reigen stands up. His knees are starting to ache from the hard wood floor, no carpet. He turns towards the ghost, which floats hazily above the putrid futon. Already Minagi is so detached from the living plane that he has no interest in a proper funeral, nor shows any distress about the undignified manner in which his body was found. These are definitely the qualms of humans, not for the dead to worry about. Still… he hung on here, hoping that his son would notice. He hoped that he would be the one to find him, to be the first – and only – to grieve.
“You came,” Minagi goes on, adding it like an afterthought.
“Your neighbours called me.”
“Yes. If I hadn’t frightened them, maybe nobody would ever have found my body.” Another pause. “Thank you for covering it.”
Reigen nods. “You’re welcome.” He puts out his hand. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” The spirit lets his power drop completely, leaving no defence. “...I wish my son had come.”
Reigen has nothing to say to this. He knows nothing about this son, where he is, what their relationship was like. Promising to find him and tell him of his father’s death seems stupid and empty.
Instead he says, “It won’t hurt.”
“Heh.” Minagi gives a gristly laugh. “How would you know?”
Reigen is at the apartment block for the rest of the afternoon. He explains the cause to Yamamoto, that of course he exorcised the spirit, and she seems relieved. She shows very little emotion about the death of Minagi, only revulsion that a dead body was decomposing a few feet above her son’s bedroom for so long. The police come and go into the apartment, look at the remains, declare it a case of natural causes. A team arrives with a body bag and they cart Minagi’s dried-up corpse out on a stretcher. All the neighbours are out by now, whispering on balconies. Nobody seems remotely moved; like Yamamoto, the only emotions on display are disgust, some surprise, plenty of judgement. Yamamoto Michiya arrives home from school in the middle of it all, a tall bespectacled boy in a black gakuran just like the one Mob used to wear. His only response to the news from his mother that he can sleep in his room again is a surly shrug as he lets himself in. He reminds Reigen of teenaged Ritsu; Mob was never so typical.
It’s getting past dusk by the time he gets away. His payment is in the form of a cheque which he half-expects to bounce but that’s not exactly at the forefront of his priorities right now. He just wants to get away from that apartment building as quickly as possible. Even though Minagi’s presence is dispersed, his soul at peace, there is something intolerable about it. The residents are satisfied, they will get on with their lives, but to him it is unbearable. This is something he’s never felt before in the aftermath of a job, no matter who performs the exorcism. It’s not that he’s never done one alone before, either. He wonders if this is how Mob feels all the time.
He checks his phone as he walks. He has two messages, one from Serizawa, one from Mob. Serizawa’s says that he’s finished his job and is on his way back. Reigen replies to say it’s late and to just head home, he’ll see him in the morning. Then he checks the message from Mob. It says much the same: that his seminar has just wrapped up and he’ll be heading over to the office. Reigen is glad that he had the forethought to send Serizawa straight home, pausing to type a response to Mob.
Okay. Just finished the job. See you in a bit.
Mob types back. Everything fine?
All good. I’ll tell you about it later.
Truthfully there is something niggling that makes him not really want to go too much into the details of it, at least not to Serizawa and Dimple, maybe not even Mob. In the thick of it, shielded by Mob’s powers, he’d felt unaffected, purely pragmatic about the matter; he was there on business and Minagi had to go and that was that. Now, however, with Mob’s powers fading, the adrenaline easing, he comes away with a creeping cloying sadness. How quickly Minagi’s hostility gave way to hopelessness; months of lying alone in his own squalid decay, terrifying neighbours who hadn’t given him a second thought, so easily reduced to nothing by the simple act of covering up his corpse.
He feels his phone buzz in his pocket as he starts to walk again but he doesn’t look. He knows it’s Mob. That’s enough. He finds his cigarettes in his inside pocket and lights himself one, pulling the smoke in over his nerves. They’re not frayed, exactly, but they feel kind of rattly and loose – like they’ve been knocked around, which is not untrue. He exhales the smoke deeply. It doesn’t taste great but it’s calming, something to distract him. It’s the other side of rush hour, the streets busy with people in loosened ties and unbuttoned uniforms getting dinner. He’s going the other way to most of them, back towards the outskirts of the business district, the side with the cheaper rent. The neon light and smell of sizzling food grows lesser, more dispersed, giving way to convenience stores and bars. He stops at the mouth of an alleyway, familiar, lined with small establishments in which to drown your sorrows. At the very end, the neon sign blinking like a beacon, is the bar that he used to frequent years ago. He hasn’t been there for a long time, completely forgetting that it even exists. He wonders if the same people go there, the ones he used to know, who used to crowd him like moths. Have they changed, aged? Do they gather around someone else? Have they forgotten him?
He resists the urge to go in just to satisfy his curiosity, to see if the bartender is the same guy, the one who called him by his first name the way Mob does. He doesn’t need to know. It makes him think of birthdays, besides, and how he’ll be thirty-six in October. He shoves his hands in his pockets and makes the rest of the journey back to the office with his head down, looking at the pavement, at his feet on the worn slabs. There are dusty marks on his shoes from Minagi’s apartment. His knees must be dirty, too. He didn’t even think to check. There’s a reason the people who remove bodies and clean up after death wear overalls. He’s thought about overalls too in the past – like the ones they wear in that old American movie Ghostbusters, 1984, the same year he was born – but it’s never more than a fleeting consideration. As with the customers today, many people are embarrassed to even admit that they think their problem is a supernatural one. Half of them only let him into their homes because he looks presentable; same for Serizawa and Mob. Suits and school uniforms are bland, safe, they give away nothing.
He gets back to the office before Mob. It’s dark now and his sign isn’t turned on. Sometimes customers wander in late but he knows they won’t get any tonight, not when the agency looks like it’s closed. It’s a nice night, warm and breezy, and he doesn’t really want to go up into the stuffy office to wait for Mob. He considers waiting outside but, as he does so, his eyes fall on the fire stairs zig-zagging up the side of the building to the roof. He’s never been up there, never seen what the view is like. He climbs them slowly, one hand on the metal rail, cool and smooth as snake scales. The building is only two storeys with a flat roof, the sole feature the steel box for the air conditioning unit. There’s a knee-high rim around the perimetre. He goes to the edge and gets up on this wall, wide enough for him to hold his balance. He looks down. The drop isn’t huge, enough to break some bones if you fell, maybe kill you if you were very unlucky. At least you’d be found quickly, he supposes – not that he’s worried. He’s got just enough of Mob’s power left to save himself if he loses his balance. He hasn’t done anything like this for a long time; when he was in school, he used to climb all kinds of things for a better view, trees, fences, lamp-posts. Fell a few times, broke his wrist once. Didn’t get much sympathy from his parents, who told him to learn a lesson from it. He stopped climbing things after that. He never had anybody to do it with, anyway. At least studying was something you were meant to do by yourself.
The city is thrumming with life, chattering, honking, steaming. All over, in every street, restaurant, bar, home, people are convening at the meat of the day, exchanging greetings, touches, kisses on the cheek. Shoes are toed off, jackets are hung up, briefcases and bags are put aside for later. The power grid will surge as lights come on, kettles are boiled, TVs and radios are plugged in. He checks his watch. Seven o’ clock. Life does not start or stop at certain times but there are those who fall through the gaps, fridges filled with food that will never be eaten, festering with colonies of other lives.
Kodokushi. That’s the word. Lonely death. It comes to him the way that forgotten words do, without ceremony, placed at the front of his mind like a meal he’s ordered. It reminds him that he’s hungry.
“What are you doing?”
Mob, to his credit, at least appears in front of him this time, not behind. Just as well – he’d have made him jump to his inadvertent death otherwise. He’s floating in mid-air, his university bag slung over one shoulder, dressed in a slouchy black sweater and fraying jeans. This is not because they are fashionable but because they are old and Mob relies on Teruki to take him shopping when he’s home from his prestigious university two hours away.
“Contemplating the meaning of life,” Reigen replies truthfully. “Thank you for remembering not to creep up on me.”
“I didn’t want to scare you when you’re standing in such a stupid place,” Mob says bluntly.
“I appreciate it. Still, I’m sure you would have caught me.”
Mob shrugs. “I guess.”
“You only guess, huh? Thanks, Mob.”
Mob lands on the wall next to him. “What are you really doing?” he asks.
Reigen grins, shrugging. “Just looking at the view.”
Mob appraises it himself for a moment. “It’s not very good,” he concludes.
“Well, what do you expect? This is hardly a premium location.”
This easy banter between he and Mob, old and comfortable and mindless, is settling. He feels himself coming back together with him at his side, a whole head taller, his warmth at his shoulder. He usually walks on his left, a force of habit.
Mob takes his hand, squeezing it firmly. “You want a better view?” he asks, already floating.
“You’re doing it anyway,” Reigen replies, feeling his feet leave the concrete. He squeezes Mob’s hand in return, reassuring him. “But okay.”
It’s so effortless for Mob, who lifts them both into the night sky, high above the office building. They’re clutching hands but Mob’s power is supporting his whole body, cradling him safely. It feels like treading water but without exertion, bubbles on the surface. The view is certainly better, a much larger scope of the city’s sprawl, though it’s not necessarily any more exciting. This is not Tokyo by any stretch; it’s just plain old Spice City, perfectly ordinary, brown-grey-blue. The neon glow is foamy, stickily clinging to the greasy underbelly of the night sky. It didn’t look like this a century ago, filled up with people that no longer exist; a century from now it will be different again and they will be the ones who are gone, cigarettes and ramen and dusty marks all swallowed up. He shouldn’t wallow in it. It’s enough, isn’t it – to be here, now, with somebody. With Mob.
Mob grips his palm tighter. “Are you happy now?” he asks, his tone familiar, searching and calm.
“Yeah,” Reigen replies. “I am.”
Over dinner he tells Mob about the job, about Minagi and how he died without anyone being aware. Mob is fairly clinical about the whole thing, tilting his head.
“How was the rent still being paid?” he asks, his chopsticks halfway to his mouth.
“His son was paying a direct debit every month,” Reigen explains.
“And he still didn’t notice that his father had died?”
Reigen shrugs. “Why would he? They weren’t on speaking terms. The landlord didn’t seem to know much more than that.”
Mob looks at his food. “That’s sad,” he says, though there’s no real weight to his voice. Reigen understands. Mob has seen plenty of things that he hasn’t, that he cannot.
“He didn’t mind being exorcised.” Reigen pauses, remembers something from a long time ago. “...Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe we should have found his son–”
“No, I think you made the right call,” Mob interrupts. He looks up, his eyes big and dark and piercing. “You did the right thing, Arataka.”
“Hm.” Reigen stirs his noodles in their broth. “It’s not easy having these powers, huh?”
“They’re nothing special, just something I can do.” Mob is more interested in his meal. “You told me that, remember?”
“I guess I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“Yes, you did.”
Maybe Mob means that he understands what it is to be human, the beating of hearts and minds – but don’t they all? Experience is exclusive. All lives are different. This is theirs: ghosts, grubby signs, grabbing late-night ramen. It wasn’t always, it won’t always be. It was not Minagi Gendo’s.
They go back to Reigen’s apartment together. Reigen doesn’t ask Mob to come with him this time but he’s glad that he does. He doesn’t want anything tonight but his company and Mob must sense it, that he doesn’t want to be by himself.
He gets himself a glass of water and sits on the sofa in his pyjamas, listening to Mob brushing his teeth in the bathroom. He has his own toothbrush that he leaves here, his own shampoo and shower gel, his own pyjamas. Often Reigen looks at the two toothbrushes side-by-side in the glass, red and blue, like a pair of chopsticks. Sometimes he feels like he’ll never get used to it.
The television is directly in front of him, switched off. He can see the reflection of himself, blurred and grey; recalls the way it warped in Minagi’s apartment when he passed it. This time it does not change, only moves as he does, mirrored. It puts the glass down on the coffee table when he does. The water sways, half-empty, thick and grey. He recalls the dust like mouse-skin floating on the surface. It won’t happen to him, at least not tonight. Mob is here.
Mob comes into the living room in his too-short pjyamas that show too much wrist and ankle. His height surprises everyone, even himself.
“I thought you’d be in bed already,” he says, scratching his neck.
“I’ll be there in a minute.” Reigen gets up, taking the glass. “You go ahead.”
Mob nods, heading past him to the bedroom. Reigen pours the rest of his water into one of his plants and takes the glass to the kitchen, washes it, puts it away in the cupboard. Then he makes his way back to the bedroom, turning off the lights as he goes. Minagi’s apartment was about the same size as this, simple, similar.
Mob is already in bed, his face turned away. Reigen gets in beside him, feeling his solid warmth like a wall at his back, and reaches out to turn off the lamp. Mob rolls over and cuddles up to him; he wraps an arm around him, nuzzles against the back of his neck.
“Are you okay?” he asks softly.
“Yeah.” Reigen pats his hand. “Do I seem down?”
“Not down, exactly… Just distant, like something’s bothering you.”
“You’re certainly a lot more observant these days.” Reigen exhales. “I guess… I’m still thinking about Minagi, that’s all.”
“It’s not like you to get hung up on a job,” Mob says sleepily.
“I know.” He almost can’t bring himself to say it. “I guess it’s selfish, I’m not trying to… you know, make it about me, it’s just… I can’t help but think how…” He sighs again, feels Mob squeeze him. “That could have been me.”
“Hmm?” Mob sounds a little more awake now. “You mean… dying like that?”
“All alone, yes. Nobody to even think of checking on me for months–”
“Don’t say stuff like that,” Mob interrupts. He seems a little cagey.
“It was just a thought,” Reigen says. “I’ve been pretty lonely for a lot of my life. It’s different now. I… I actually have friends. I have you.”
“I could say the same,” Mob says. “Who knows what could have happened to me. I might have ended up like Mogami. Like Suzuki.” He’s quiet for a moment. Reigen feels him breathing against the back of his neck.
“...I never told you this,” he says eventually. Reigen feels his stomach sink; sentences that start like that usually aren’t good. “You know when we fought Mogami all those years ago? I went into Asagiri-san’s body to push him out and he trapped me there.”
“Yes,” Reigen says. “Dimple helped out by breaking down the barrier.”
“Yes. I wouldn’t have got out if it wasn’t for him. But… well, Mogami created an entire false world where I had no powers, no family, no friends. You weren’t there, Ritsu didn’t know me. I went to school and came home to an empty house. It was just Minori and her gang bullying me mercilessly and nothing else. I guess in the real world it was only a couple of minutes but to me… it was six months.”
Reigen is quiet for a long moment, letting this settle like sediment. That case was years ago but now it comes back to him with renewed rawness. Mob had been so young then, only fourteen years old.
“I had no idea,” he says eventually.
“I know. I didn’t tell you.”
Reigen touches Mob’s wrist, feels his pulse, thick and slow. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to upset you,” Mob says. Then: “Or… maybe I thought you wouldn’t understand. I was naïve. I’m sorry.”
“Jeez, Mob, you don’t have to apologise for that.” Reigen feels him snuggle up to him. “Still… I suppose there was nothing I could have done about it, anyway.”
“No,” Mob agrees gently. “And we saved Asagiri-san. I guess she was lonely, as well. Mogami-san, too; Suzuki-san, Serizawa-san, Dimple. Me. You. Nobody wants to be alone, do they?”
Reigen pats his hand again. “You’re an old soul, aren’t you, Mob?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means… you’re like a wise ancient master in the body of somebody much younger. You’ve been like this since you were a kid.”
“So you should have been calling me ‘Shishou’,” Mob mumbles in his ear.
“Maybe.” Reigen yawns. “Too late now.”
“It’s never too late for anything,” Mob says. His voice is faint now, almost asleep.
“Mmm,” Reigen agrees, closing his eyes. “Maybe not.”
Tomorrow, he thinks, he’ll get the address of Minagi’s son from the landlord. He’ll go and see him himself, tell him about his father, how he wished he would come. Maybe he’ll bring Mob, who sees the way the world turns differently to everyone else. A matter for the morning, in any case. For now the world is still – or, at least, the one made up of the two of them and all their choices.
There’s a crack in the curtains, letting in a yellowish thread of light. Reigen uses the very last grains of his borrowed power to close them completely, exhausting it, and then he settles down and goes to sleep, Mob’s arm thrown over him, warm and heavy and safe.