The night sky ebbs away from Spice City and writhes, pale and haunting, against the rays of the morning sun like a fading ghost perforated by beams of holy light. The people who live there take for granted the simple miracle of the presence of a new day unfolding in front of their eyes- the nonbelievers of the city say this world is damned, and curse it and everything it stands for.
Except Reigen, who only curses the time displayed on his alarm clock, and then gets dressed.
Posters are plastered all over the empty storefront windows scattered around the blocks flanking Reigen's apartment like hastily applied bandages slapped over old wounds that healed incorrectly, like the artifice of paper and tape alone could fill the emptiness of the vacant lots with something divine.
It sounds so stupid to say aloud, but, yes, there is a cult posting WANTED ads for a strange little doodle that they call God.
Reigen stirs around the salt in his pockets with his hands as he continues down the street.
There's a metaphor here, one about the body and the mind and the soul, about how the meatsacks still stuck on this mortal coil think they can fill their world with spirituality using nothing but symbols and blind, empty tokens. How that's futile. You cannot simply put God on paper and say, "this is him, he is mine, and I am full of grace because I have decided" so easily, so entirely. Reigen's silver tongue prods at the thought, shaping raw criticism into words, but what he comes up with makes him feel like such a hypocrite that it all melts in his mouth.
What's it matter, anyway? The cult is just a cult without a purpose, a chicken with no head. It's not a client. Reigen doesn't care if they worship a paper and ink God to fill their spirits with. He doesn't care if their faith sits with some kind of placebo and not the real thing.
Placebos work sometimes, after all. Placebos can be good enough. Reigen's life's work relies on them.
Reigen himself- the name, the persona, the job- is a placebo, actually. It's all fake.
He hurries down the street, hands still jammed into salty pockets, and thinks that maybe it's a blessing that he can't see anything other than the world in front of his own two eyes.
The troublesome thing about it is, though, that God really looks like the doodle on the posters. Reigen's been taking his grace for granted long enough to know those blank eyes and black, lackluster hair when he sees it.
Shigeo is sitting in his office right now, actually, looking down at one of his textbooks and flipping through his assigned chapters because today is one of those days when absolutely nothing is happening.
"This is pretty lame," Reigen says, his feet propped up on his desk and his hands restrained behind the thoughts buzzing around inside his head. "You can go hang out with your club friends, or whatever you want to do. I can hold the fort by myself." Shigeo doesn't need permission, not really, but Reigen relinquishes it to him anyway with Herculean effort. It's a token of devotion.
"No," Shigeo says. "Being here is fine, today, if that is alright."
Reigen takes that as a victory, and frowns as it sours. Today. Shigeo's presence is fine today. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day, maybe not ever again. Only today.
But, then again, Reigen has someone sitting in the middle of his comically vacant business today, has something piecing together his empty life right at the epicenter, and that's more than the Psycho Helmet Cult and all of its posters and funding can say.
"Sure, if you want. It's your life," Reigen answers.
Searching for God, searching for God. Ha! God found Reigen, not that stupid cult. God came looking for Reigen. In fact, God chose him, asked for his help, put his faith in Reigen first, not the other way around. It's a story they both know very well.
And, to this day, Reigen bites back the urge to flaunt it in Shigeo's face whenever something else threatens to take the boy's attention. His words have the tendency to be abrasive, calculated, and sting like salt in an open wound, and Reigen is used to throwing both around at will whenever it suits him. But both are only placebos, only lies.
The truth is, Shigeo made Reigen a somebody. Shigeo believed in him and everything he said, sometimes almost blindly. Faith is a powerful thing.
And, fucking hell, Reigen Arataka wasn't even his real name. Nothing was real. He was not psychic, he was not special in any way. He had nothing to offer except jealousy, except ego, except lies, except greed.
Shigeo knows it, too. He saw the media put Reigen up on an altar for slaughter before the public on live, national television. But he still answers with faith, with admiration, and then, after everything, forgiveness.
Grace.
Shigeo answers Reigen's bullshit with love and grace. It's more than Reigen deserves.
He shouldn't even be allowed to want it. Reigen is a grown-ass man, and he admits that he covets the worship and attention, anyway.
The first step to solving a problem is admitting it, or something.
"Mob," Reigen says, planting his feet on the plain linoleum coating the floor of his office, "you can come and go whenever you want, you know?" He isn't brave enough to say goodbye, not outright. Not yet. Probably won't ever be.
But he knows it's coming, one day.
Shigeo's eyes take the whole universe into their dark depths, and reflect Reigen's face back at him in a way Reigen himself could never imagine he could look. Sometimes he wonders if it's a mirage. Sometimes he wonders if Shigeo is a mirage, or a miracle, when Reigen manages to get his head far enough out of his own ass to actually take a gander.
"I know," Shigeo says.
The fan blades in the ceiling rotate like always, and the world beneath Reigen's feet spins like always. And it will continue to do so, even after Shigeo is long gone and Reigen is left to sit and stew by himself, his faith still firmly pinned on the back of a God that he can no longer see, stuck on like a poster slapped on the front of a dilapidated store window, or a crumpled scrap of paper that says "kick me" taped to someone's back.
Then, Reigen really will be like everyone else- foolish and superstitious and looking for something that, by all accounts, isn't real. It's just an invisible force that lives only in his head. A delusion, a ghost- like psychics with their fixation on their own power. Reigen will be bound by the belief in a force that simply isn't there.
It's so hypocritical. He'd be a fool to believe it. Shigeo is human- he's not actually special. But that's exactly what makes him so great.
Reigen vacillates between ideals and reality and how it relates to him. It's exhausting.
"Mob. Do you," Reigen quietly checks his pockets for his wallet, "want to go get takoyaki?"
Shigeo glances up. "Are you saying that this will be my wage for today? Takoyaki?"
"Uh? Hey! What's that supposed to mean! You think I'm short-changing you?" Reigen's lips pull to one side of his face and show off his teeth.
Shigeo's blank face betrays nothing, but Reigen knows what he is thinking. Or, he thinks he knows.
"No. Not today," Reigen relents. "I'm just hungry."
It's a weird feeling, when the person who looks up to you knows that you can offer so little but hangs around anyway. Reigen can barely understand how such a thing is possible. In fact, he wouldn't, if the proof was not sitting in front of him.
Reigen's not good at that whole blind faith thing.
"Yes, I would like some takoyaki," Shigeo says.
Maybe, eventually, he will be, if Shigeo stays and helps him a little longer, until Reigen is ready to let go.