Author's Note: Warning to anime viewers- this has contextual spoilers for the manga. It won't give away much, but may be a little harder to follow in some places as a result. Also, you're warned for blood and trauma.

This story is part of a series that simply explores character dynamics and "what-ifs". The series is entitled "Color in a Monochrome World" And will be released as a single, bound copy once the whole series is finished.

Thank you for reading and leaving feedback!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The end of spring had blown the pink-white cherry blossoms from the branches and put green leaves in their place, and now late summer superseded the school vacation with fireworks of crimson, fuchsia, white, and purple stemming from the crepe myrtles spread out beneath the viridian canopies of the cherry trees. They surrounded Salt Middle School and dropped frilled blossoms on the children as they rampant in the streets, like rats in a maze searching for the dinner waiting in their homes.

Reigen considered them with an inhale, and then turned away with an exhale as he read the hands of the clock hanging from the front of the building.

Soon, the river of uniformed students reduced to a trickle, and then to the last individual stragglers leaking through the doors like drops from a rusted faucet. Then, nothing. Nothing and no one.

Reigen reached into his pocket for something, thought better of it, and again stared at the huge eye reflecting the time back down at him.

"He's at his club meeting."

Reigen turned around.

Standing just behind the lonely school gate was Ritsu, his bag in his hands and the breeze calling forth the fall as it tugged at his dark hair. Crepe myrtle blossoms fell abound around him and landed on his shoulders to cover the black of his uniform, stripping the color away from him with lush, deliberate strikes, like flowers could cut like knives and cloth could bleed out red petals.

"My brother is at his club meeting, the same as he is every day," Ritsu said. "Or did you not know that, Mister Reigen?"

Reigen's shoulders tilted upwards with the corners of his mouth. "No, no, I know. I figured I'd wait and catch him after. Serizawa has class right now, and I need some help with this next job."

"Imagine that," Ritsu said, his gaze even. "You, needing help."

A sliver of bright blue sky jutting through the spaces between the surrounding buildings made for a jarring contrast with Reigen's red hair. "His club meeting lasts about an hour or so, right? I was thinking I'd go get dinner or something." He tilted his head, and the edges of the sky framed him like he were a picture. "Do you want anything? Mob said you like pork." He blinked. "You do like pork, right?"

Ritsu might as well have been slapped. "Me. You're asking me if I want to eat with you."

"You called out to me today." Reigen shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

A pleasant, even mask slipped over Ritsu's face. "I appreciate the offer, but I don't believe it's wise to go eat dinner with a man that I barely know- one that I caught lurking outside my school, lying in wait to ambush a different student."

And then it was Reigen's turn to smile blithely beneath incredulous eyes. "Well." He rubbed at his neck. "Aren't you a wise and responsible young man!" he said, and laughed.

Ritsu's tongue struck the back of his teeth like flint lighting a spark on stone. "Tch."

"No, seriously! Mob's really lucky to have a little brother as on top of it as you are," Reigen added, turning away and giving a real smile to the clock. "It's great you're so close to your brother. Really."

Ritsu glowered, petals dripping down his front and sticking to his breast, congregating right where Reigen's words struck him.

Reigen blathered on, unaware. "It's good that he can trust you- and that he doesn't have to worry about you. It's not easy to be so dependable at your age, you know. It's really admirable." He smiled wider. "Mob gets so excited when it comes to you."

In the distance, a group of boys dressed in white and red chanted as they ran laps around the school. One of them lagged behind the others like a bobber on a fishing line. Ritsu willfully kept his focus on Reigen, who tossed him a grin.

"You do seem to have it together. You know, maybe I really should be asking you for help instead of-"

"Are you mocking me?" Ritsu cut in. His voice was quiet, and his eyes dark.

"Hunh?"

"Don't act like you know anything about me," the boy commanded.

Reigen quirked his eyebrows, one palm held forwards as if to stave the boy off. "I'm not. I only know what Mob tells me about you, and what I have seen myself." He opened his hand up to support the sky. "I'm not trying to pull anything, here, okay?"

"Liar," said Ritsu. He took a step out from beneath the bloody cover of the flowering tree above him, and then another, and another. The petals trailed off of him and fled into the air.

Reigen waved his hand from side to side in front of him, mouth agape and brow furrowed, bewildered. "Ritsu, listen. I'm not-"

"A grown man shouldn't need to wait around for a middle schooler to do his work for him." The crepe myrtles shivered, despite the absence of the wind. Reigen held his ground from where he stood on the sidewalk as Ritsu drew closer. "But somehow, you know enough to be able to pretend to be my brother's friend despite that." Ritsu glared at the man in front of him as if Reigen were not his senior of fifteen years, but a reflection of himself staring back from within some strange mirror. His hands balled into fists as if to fight his shadow.

Meanwhile, Reigen's hands found his pockets again. "Is there something you want to say, Ritsu?"

Fingers curled and clenched until the knuckles turned white.

"I'm not going to go and tell on you to Mob, you know." Reigen assured him. "You don't have to hide your feelings."

The hands of the clock edged forwards, and falling blossoms again chipped away at the obscuring black of Ritsu's uniform- this time white, from a new tree.

But Reigen let the clock dictate his actions. "Alright. I'm done." He turned on his heel. "If you see your brother before I do, tell him to call me," he said, and left Ritsu standing on the other side of the dividing line cast by the shadow of the school gate, flowers wearing him down one by one.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Come late fall, when the air grew colder and the sun sank beneath the horizon earlier and earlier with each passing day, Ritsu appeared in Reigen's office, blown in as if by the wind picking up outside.

"Well, hey," Reigen said. "This is a surprise. Where's your brother?"

"At his club meeting." Ritsu propped his dry umbrella against the door. "As he always is at this time."

"Yeah, but I just figured…" Reigen shook his head and leaned forward on his desk. "Nevermind. What brings you here? Do you need a consultation, or did you just wanna find a place to hang out before the storm hits?"

Ritsu stayed put, hands by his sides. A plastic bag came into view through the windowpanes for a moment, and then flew off as the wind snatched it up.

"You can sit down, if you want to."

"I don't," Ritsu answered.

Reigen opened his mouth, and then closed it. "Well, okay, that's fine too. You can, uh, stand there, or take something from the bookshelf if you want, and I'll make some tea."

"Don't trouble yourself. I don't want any tea," Ritsu said. "No, thank you."

A raindrop struck the outside of the window behind Reigen's desk and ran down the glass. Another followed, and then another, until their soft tapping grew into a steady exhale of water on the concrete, glass, and steel of the city.

Reigen gave in to the distraction. "Oh! Looks like you got out of there just in time. That's good. We needed rain." He smiled. "Hope Mob doesn't get too wet on his run."

"Today he lifts weights inside, like the Body Improvement always does at this time of the week. Surely you should have known that by now." Ritsu glanced around. "Where is Serizawa?"

"Night classes." Reigen grinned, cheeky, and leaned his head on his palm. "Like always, at this time of the week. Surely you should have known that by now."

Ritsu's ensuing stare could poison an entire nation.

"Anyway, are you trying to be a piece of the furniture?" Reigen asked. "Should I put a lampshade on you? It might help you look not so out of your element." When the boy gave no reaction, Reigen gestured for him to move closer. "Geez. For real, don't just stand there- you're creeping me out. Come in."

Ritsu hesitated, and then took a few steps away from the doorway.

"Hm! Right there, you'd make a pretty good coat rack. I've been thinking about getting a new one."

A few steps more, and Ritsu was right in front of the empty reception desk.

"If only you'd squat," Reigen said, "then you'd be a nice new stool for your brother."

At that, Ritsu strode over to Reigen's desk and loomed over the surface like the reaper over the terminally ill. "Don't mock me," he said. The corner of the sky outside silently lit up for an instant.

Reigen held up both hands. "Sorry, sorry. Just thought I'd have some fun with you, that's all. Someone your age has no business looking so serious all the time." He knitted his fingers together. "So! How can I help you today?" He winked. "Seriously."

At first, Ritsu's pupils bore holes into Reigen's, but then instead cut out the edges of his desk, and traced over his own knuckles. "Don't you have any clients?"

"No more today," Reigen said. "Especially not in this kind of weather."

Ritsu frowned deeper. "Don't you have any calls to make?"

"No, not particularly."

"Isn't there some paperwork you should be doing?"

"I already did it."

"Any business development you could work on?"

"I updated my homepage right after lunch."

"Any resumes to look over?"

"From who? From you?"

"Isn't it time for you to go home?"

"In this weather? I'll pass."

"Don't you," Ritsu's brown eyes flitted over the contents of Reigen's desk- a laptop, a metal tray with a small stack of neatly bound papers sitting inside, a cup full of pens, a picture frame, "have anything else to do today?"

Reigen raised his eyebrows, but otherwise didn't answer.

"Don't you?"

"What's this really about, Ritsu?" Reigen pried.

The rain pelted the building faster and harder, soft voice rising to a crescendo as more of the sky flashed white from behind the clouds. Ritsu's umbrella fell from where it leaned against the doorway. Above them, the fluorescent lights buzzed and the fan spun in circles.

"Why?" Ritsu said, just loud enough to ring out across the short distance between them, barely harsh enough to disturb the air, like an earthquake on the edges of the world might echo in rings on the surface of a glass of water an eternity away, or like how thunder does not roll in until after the lightning has already hit, already electrified the earth, already started a wildfire and decimated a forest before anyone realized disaster was nigh. "Why is it you? I'm his brother. So why is it you?! You're," his hard, glassy, dark eyes drank in Reigen, and spat acid back out at him, "pathetic."

Reigen had the grace to stay still and tranquil, like a rod of iron reaching up from the earth and into the heavens, unaffected by the prying, insistent gusts spinning around it, waiting.

And Ritsu struck. "I hate you."

The fan stilled, and the lights flickered as a crash rumbled outside.

"I hate you," the boy said again. "I hate you. You took him from me. I don't know why. I don't know how. But you took him from me- I know it. You took him, and I let you." He glared at the floor. "I hate you. I, I-!" Ritsu choked on the air churning around him, moving all on its own. The lights flickered faster, disorienting and blinding. "I let you take my brother from me, and now you get to know whatever he's thinking, whatever bothers him, everything! And I'm left behind- his helpless, average, plain little brother, like always!" The rain outside bent away from the windows, like the slow tear tracks running down over Ritsu's cheeks. "I said I was done with this, with this stupid good brother act!"

"Ritsu," Reigen tried. The papers and detritus on his desk trembled, and soon, the desk itself quivered too.

"Even that Hanazawa boy knows, can see, understands what he's thinking, how he feels! So why can't I?!"

"Ritsu, don't do this to yourself."

The boy rounded on Reigen. Behind him, the furniture in the office followed the tilt of his head. "And you! You took him away from me, and I let you! I let you!" The papers in the room folded, twisted, and shredded into a thousand tiny blades as they gouged papercuts into the inside of the room.

"Ritsu!" Reigen froze, caught between the rage of the child in front of him and the destruction he inspired whirling around behind him.

Ritsu pressed his palms to his eyes and shook his head, his black bangs spilling everywhere before rising back into obsidian peaks. Sweat poured down his face and disappeared into his collar.

Reigen's chair clung to the floor in terror before springing into the air in a panic. He grabbed onto his desk and held fast. "Ritsu, please-!"

"I let you!" Ritsu cried, his hair swirling in the storm brewing around him. "I'm his brother, and I should have tried harder! I shouldn't have run away! All I've been doing is running away! I thought I had made it back- I thought I had, but then, when he needed help, when he needed someone to go follow him," Ritsu's breath shuddered, the air itself shrieking as he pulled it into himself, "I just stood there- and watched you go with him farther and farther away!"

The ceiling tiles cracked and shattered, and then fell through the metal grid and into the whirlwind buzzing about with Ritsu at the center.

"And I know, I saw- I saw what Suzuki did!"

"Ritsu, you can't protect Mob from everything! It's not your job!" Reigen's shout was small over the clatter of his furniture slamming against the walls in a thunderclap of splintering wood.

"And it's yours? Is that how you justify using him? By saying you're protecting him?!" The white half-moon of Ritsu's nails bit into his temples. One wide, ringed eye peered out at Reigen and looked through him like he were an illusion.

Reigen reached out for Ritsu, and the boy blew him back against the wall. "Stop this! You need to calm down! You can control this- I know you can! This isn't you! This isn't-!"

"What do you know?! You- you, a man who doesn't even have powers at all! A man who lies to make himself look impressive- to middle schoolers! Why?!" The ground cracked beneath Ritsu's feet, and the walls buckled. "Why did he pick you?!" The detritus around him picked up speed. "I hate you! I hate-! I hate-! I hate-! I HATE-!"

"RITSU!"

Ritsu screamed, and the lights shattered and went out with finality, a shower of sparks raining down like short-lived petals of white from a spring that had already come and gone. They faded and left the cold darkness to hide whatever came after.

Something squealed as it bent, and something else cracked, and a dull, wet thud laced with a cry softened the chaos until the last of it fell away in a series of isolated, meaningless clatters.

The rain streamed down the low light peeking through the window at the back of the room, along with something else trailing down the inside, something thicker.

"These powers- what if they aren't even mine?!" The question echoed in the room beneath the rolling thunder outside. "What if they're just my brother's, thrown at me like some cheap consolation prize?!" A breath. "He can do that. He can do that, and then he can take them away. He can do anything. Anything." Another choked breath. "I'm scared." A sob, and then two. "I'm always scared." Something soft hit the floor. "I want my brother…"

Dark minutes passed in silence, broken only by the whisper of the rain outside and the sound of quiet weeping.

Then, soft, hesitant: "Mister Reigen?"

Shoes scuffed the floor, and something creaked. "Mister Reigen? Are you here?" A quiet splash elicited a small gasp. "There's something wet here… did a pipe burst? Mister Reigen? Hello?"

Hot, electric light filled the room, and Ritsu saw it framed by the cracked window right in front of him- Reigen, with a twisted metal strip coated dark and wet near the window and dry on the floor running diagonally through his center. It propped him up to pray on his knees- head bowed, eyes closed- and held him up out of the puddle dripping down out of the right half of his face.

The thunder rattled the building, and then threw Ritsu back into blackness again.