Touichirou had never been a fan of sleeping on the floor.
Not on a futon and certainly not on a bare carpet. Even when he and Fukuda had sleepovers he always took the bed, even if it wasn't his own bed, because he was the leader and the leader did not sleep on the floor. Of course he wasn't the leader anymore now was he?
He was the leader of himself.
Fukuda was all grown up, and apparently they had stopped being friends at some point, and his parents were dead…elsewhere, not that he had ever been the leader of his house, and everyone he knew was off with their own families and now he was here all alone and-
He pulled the blanket up over his face. He was fine, just tired.
He heard footsteps. The ground was shaking a little as someone walked around…Reigen, right. The person he was staying with. He easily could have lived on his own in the woods if he had wanted to, he had done it before after all, but for the time being it made the most amount of sense to be here with Reigen and not off on his own. He needed to plan out another course of action. He wasn't the leader of the world, he had no friends, his parents were gone, and he was stuck in the future. Obviously he needed a plan but…but what could he possibly do?!
He could stop it.
"Stop it. You're not a child." Said Touichirou as he opened his eyes and sat up. Oh…this wasn't a blanket at all, it was a jacket. Reigen must have put it over him in his sleep…he had fallen asleep in front of the TV. Well, that was one good thing about being stuck here, Reigen seemed to be a man of his word. He had said that he would get Touichirou a big bag of videogames and he had. For systems that hadn't been invented yet, when he left, too. More 7800 games than he'd ever seen in his life. Other systems, too, but he didn't really care for them.
There was no way to improve upon perfection.
"No Serizawa, it's alright, you really don't have to show up today." He heard Reigen on the phone, or rather what they called a phone these days. They were more like computers to Touichirou than phones. Better computers than he'd ever seen in his life…and to think, he'd thought that a color monitor was amazing…times were very strange. So much had changed, words didn't even mean the same things as they had when he'd left, and the whole thing just made him feel like the ground had come out from under him and he'd forgotten how to fly! He just…he just…
He stuck to what he knew.
He reached out and turned the television back on. It took a moment to feel around for the buttons with his powers, they were in the back, which was weird…but this was the future and the future was weird. But good…in some ways. He may not have achieved any of his reasons for existing but at least there were videogames. Videogames and…he checked his watch. It hadn't broken, thankfully, in the crash. He should have been getting ready for school right now but he didn't have to. In this world he, the one who everyone knew, was Father's age. He didn't have to go to school anymore. The him who was supposed to be here. No, he was probably on his way to work.
He had a job.
The thought nearly stops Touichirou in his tracks. The cartridge in his hand fell and hovered for a moment before he picked it up. The version of him that existed in this world had a job like Father had a job. Probably the same one since he hadn't taken over the world. Not that he wanted Father's job. Father made money, which he had said was a man's obligation in life, but Touichirou wanted more than money. He wanted to make his mark on the world, to fix it, either that or to leave it…
But that was a stupid goal.
"…really, I'll be alright. I'm just a little under the weather, I'm just going to go in and take care of what I need to take care of and then I'm going home…really…really!" Reigen was walking and talking again. The floor was shaking even under the rug. This wasn't a very nice place, Touichirou's room was nicer than this and he was only thirteen. This couldn't have been Reigen's goal, where he had wanted to end up, in life…it felt nice, actually…
Someone else had failed too.
Which meant that he was less of a failure than he had thought. He at least had a family and a job, which was what men were supposed to have as Father had told him numerous times, and so what if he hadn't taken over the world? He had invented time travel! He had invented time travel and he had children and…and that was a lot for a person to accomplish in one lifetime. So maybe this was alright. Maybe it was alright to take a break and…and anyway he had things to do, important things.
Like playing through the entire 7800 library before he had to go home. There, that was an important goal.
He put the cartridge in and…nothing. He took it out and blew in it. Stupid dust…maybe having Father's job wouldn't have been all bad. Father had whole teams of people working under him, including research and development. Those were the people who came up with new ideas for computers and peripherals. If Touichirou had been in charge he would have come up with a cartridge that worked even if it got a little bit of dust on the inside. Or something better than a cartridge, like a disk, though they were expensive…even he didn't have unlimited pocket money…the him that existed now. If he'd had a job like Father's then he would have had a lot more money, of course he would have had to provided some to his family as would have been his obligation as a man, but still…but then he would have had to have people above him who told him what to do.
Touichirou didn't think that he could handle that.
He was the most powerful being on earth! Nobody else…in his time. That he knew of. He put the cartridge in. There were a lot of these, that was why they had been so cheap. When he had been…when he had come from there hadn't been that many 7800 games, since people were stupid and jumped on the Nintendo bandwagon like the inbred wastes of oxygen that they were, so they were expensive. Special. Now…things were different now. He was different. He had been all alone when he had been a kid, before meeting Fukuda, and he knew now that assuming everyone else like him would be as weak as Fukuda was a grievous oversight.
He wasn't special.
That was why he was just another person in this world. Just like Father…it was amazing that he had even stayed on this world. Touichirou wanted to leave and he wasn't even living the older version of him's life. Leaving…just saying goodbye to this rock and seeing what was out there. Where he had come from…he wasn't a child anymore. He knew where he came from, Seasoning City Japan. He hadn't been left on this planet by his real parents. His parents were Suzuki Yoshio and Abi. He was as human as everyone else whether he liked it or not. He was just like everyone else whether he liked it or not…but not just like everyone else.
He got to stay home from school and play videogames all day.
There. Now it was reading the cartridge. Space Invaders had never looked so good, not even in the arcade. Of course the arcade version didn't have color. Color made all the difference. That was something good about the future, everything was in color, and they even had 3D graphics now….would Space Invaders work in 3D? He turned to ask-
No one. Fukuda wasn't there.
He turned back to what he had been doing. He didn't need anyone, not even Fukuda. He had just…wanted someone to talk to because…because talking to himself was a sign of insanity! He didn't need anyone. He was the best…he had thought that he had been the best but…but now he wasn't…it didn't matter. Maybe in not knowing that he was the best, that he crew up to be the best, then he would know what he had done wrong and then he'd grow up to be the best! Yes, that made sense. It was like…like this. When he had started playing he hadn't been very good, and he'd gotten mad and completely destroyed the arcade, but then he'd gotten better and better and now he was the best Space Invaders player in Seasoning City, and probably all of Japan if not the world, not that he would have known. Mother hated the idea of him travelling….
Mother wasn't around.
The ground shook again. He heard a door open and shut. He ignored it. That was probably just Reigen getting ready for whatever he did for work. Touichirou didn't care. It wasn't like he had anything to do today…this version of him. The adult version of him was also getting ready for work, probably. He'd have to ask Sho…he had a lot to ask Sho. Like who his mother was! If he knew then he could look her up when he got back home, or at least whichever member of her family was in the phonebook, and then he could ask her out and then he could be the one who got a girlfriend first and then Fukuda could finally shut up about the stupid band trip!
There. This hadn't been a total waste of time.
"Ok, I'm not sure if I like the look in your eyes." Said Reigen as he stood beside him. Touichirou shrugged and finished his game. Too slow. He was losing his touch.
"Then stop looking at me." said Touichirou as he got back to it. Different controller, maybe. He was fastest on the 2600. Different bombs, too, and enemies but that shouldn't have mattered. Space Invaders was Space Invaders. He was just too used to the 2600, that was all…he could feel himself being looked at. He couldn't think.
He died.
"See what you did?" asked Touichirou. He turned to face Reigen. He was tying his tie like…like he hadn't just cost Touichirou his game and made him a failure in the eyes of…of himself!
"Just start again. What is that, Space Invaders?" asked Reigen
"Obviously." Said Touichirou
"I still can't believe you wanted that. That game's older than you are, you know that right?" asked Reigen. Touichirou shook his head.
"I was born in 1973. This game was born in…made in! This game was made in 1978. It came out when I was five, I remember. How do you not know then the greatest game in the history of existence came out?" asked Touichirou
"Excuse me? Greatest game ever?" asked Reigen
"Yes. Obviously." Said Touichirou
"You think that Space Invaders is the greatest game ever?" asked Reigen
"Yes, I just said that I did. Now stop distracting me, I'm losing." Said Touichirou. Reigen, for some reason, stood right next to him and started actually watching. Touichirou patted the floor beside him. If Reigen was going to stare he could have at least stared unobtrusively.
"You know you can just shoot through your shields, right?" asked Reigen. Touichirou did his best not to shove Reigen. He reminded himself that this was not Fukuda and, while he could survive in the woods, it was cold out this time of year…somehow colder than he remembered it.
"I know, I'm not stupid. You're stupid." Said Touichirou
"Well aren't you polite?" asked Reigen
"No, of course not. I see nor reason to be polite when you're being stupid. If I shoot through my shields then I have nothing to defend myself with. My situation is clearly not so dire. I not losing, just not…winning well enough." Said Touichirou
"Uh-huh, not winning well enough. Well whenever you're done winning turn that off. We're going to work." Said Reigen. Touichirou hit the pause button and turned to face Reigen.
"What do you mean, 'we'?" asked Touichirou
"I mean the both of us. There's no way I'm leaving you alone in here." Said Reigen. Touichirou unpaused his game.
"I'm not a child, I can stay home alone. Mother and Father leave me home alone all the time." Said Touichirou. Being here alone…alone…the thought was pleasant. Pleasant and warm. Like sitting right under the heater. It would have been nice to have been alone, along with himself. Alone long enough to think. It had been so…loud, yes. Too loud. Too much for him to take in. He needed to be alone, to plan his next move, and to make his way through this pile of games.
He at least wanted to try them out before heading home, which of course would be happening at some point in the future.
"Yeah, there's no way I'm leaving you here alone. Now come on, hurry up and win, we have a full day ahead of us." Said Reigen. Touichirou didn't know if he needed to hurry or not. If it had been Father telling him to get up and move then he would have just let himself die. Father didn't like to be kept waiting. But Reigen, of course, wasn't nearly as frightening as Father. So Touichirou played until he won for real.
Then he left.
He would have hurried if it had been Father, partially because Father frightened him sometimes and partially because he had never actually been to work with Father. He knew what Father did, he gave orders and carried out the orders the 'fools' above him gave, but he had never even seen his Father's workplace let alone set foot in it. It would have been exciting to do so…but of course that was never going to happen. Father was long retired by now, he must have been seventy three by now, so it wasn't as though there was anyway for him to find Father now…he didn't need Mother or Father anyway.
He was not a child.
And he didn't need to be carted around like one! But Reigen didn't want to leave him alone and Touichirou was technically a guest in his home until he figured out how to get home…until he figured out when he wanted to get home. There was still so much he had to learn about the future, so many games to play, and so many chances to see where it had all gone wrong. He was supposed to be ruling the world! Not working in a office or whatever it was he did these days. He was supposed to have accomplished more than this by now!
At least he wasn't doing as badly as Reigen, though.
As soon as they reached the office Reigen directed him to a small desk. There was a nameplate on the front, it said 'Mob'…oh, Shigeo. Right. One of his son's…one of Sho's friends. It felt strange to think about it, the fact that he had children. Once he got past the fact that he actually slept with not only one but two girls, which was two more than Fukuda had, it was just…odd. There were little half clones of him out in the world. They were at school right now and they had friends and goals and thoughts and emotions and…and he'd made humans. He'd made half clones…it was almost too much to take in…too much to think about…
So he tried not to think.
It was easier said than done. This room was so boring! Reigen, apparently, worked out of this office. This was smaller than Father's office, Touichirou had seen photographs, and he didn't even have anyone working for him. Touichirou couldn't even tell what it was that he did. Sprits and Such…well he wasn't in any way psychic so he had no idea what it was that he did with spirits and the 'such' portion of the name seemed to refer to everything and nothing at the same time. So confusing, and so boring!
Touichirou almost wished that he had been in school. Almost.
It was Monday. He had homework to turn in, and a math test, and also he needed to meet up with Fukuda and ask him if there was anything happening that would make him abandon their nearly full year of friendship at some point in the next thirty three years. Also his homeroom teacher had moved his seat and now he sat next to that new girl who always smelled like strawberries…he had a lot to get back to! He had to…he was so bored he was even missing school.
He needed to count his blessings, as Mother would have said.
What would she have been doing right now? Probably cleaning up the breakfast dishes or…he actually had no idea what Mother did when he wasn't home beyond cooking and cleaning. It had never occurred to him but she must have done something during the day…what else did mothers do? He'd ask…someone. Maybe Sho. Yes, a discussion on mothers would have been good. Then maybe Sho would tell him what had happened to his Mother, and what her name was, and where she was from, and what she had been doing in 1986, and her address back then, and her phone number, and anything else he needed to do to find one of two girls in all of Japan that had been willing to sleep with him.
Then, and only then, could he have beaten Fukuda.
Touichirou balanced a pencil on the edge of his desk with his powers. He was so bored…he wished that he had one of those phone things. Normally he would have, if had been in school like he would have on any normal day, been talking to Fukuda or at least passing him notes. Anything to take the boredom away. Even if he and Fukuda weren't on the best of terms right now…well, it wasn't that bad. Making out with a girl on the band trip wasn't anything close to having children. But as adults! Father had made it perfectly clear that he had no business having children before he could support them. He only got ten thousand a week, not nearly enough to take care of a family. But still, since he knew that he had beaten Fukuda they could go back to being friends like they had been before, they could stop being so tense around each other, and Touichirou was even willing to forgive Fukuda for abandoning him in the future.
There, at least that was settled.
He picked up another pencil and let it spin on the desk. The graphite was making a little black dot on the desk. Mob's desk. Shigeo's. He liked Shigeo better than Mob, though he really should have been calling him Kageyama since they had known each other for a little over twenty four hours. Much too soon for that, much too soon to be friends, and Touichirou didn't even know why he was thinking about being friends with Mob in the first place. He didn't need friends. He was fine on his own.
He didn't need anyone but himself.
"…you so much, Reigen-san! It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted right off of my shoulders!" he heard a door open and then a voice he didn't recognize. He let the pencils he had been balancing fall down onto the desk…not that he'd been startled, because he hadn't. He had just forgotten that Reigen had a client with him, that he'd been doing whatever it was that he was.
Touichirou didn't get startled.
He looked down at the desk in front of him. Footsteps, again. He focused on the dots he'd drawn all over the top of it. More talking, more voices. He reached for his Walkman…which for once wasn't attached to his pants. He couldn't believe that he'd forgotten it. Without it he would have to be there and listening and…and it was just easier when he knew what to do.
When one didn't know what to do the best thing to do was nothing at all.
"Now you just call and make an appointment if you need me again. My assistant will write you a…actually, I'll write you a receipt. Just hold on." Said Reigen as Touichirou looked down at his desk and pretended to be invisible. He did, actually, know how to change the refraction of the light around him but he knew better than to do that in front of people who weren't psychic. More movement, Reigen reaching over him to a pad of paper on the desk, and then more talking. He sat still, so still, that he feared he might have accidentally bent the light around him and turned invisible.
He hated it when that happened.
"Reigen-san! I didn't know that you had a son…wait…isn't today a school day?" Touichirou looked up…and his view was immediately blocked by Reigen.
"Say, isn't your parking meter almost up?" asked Reigen as he practically threw himself onto Touichirou's…onto Mob's desk. Shigeo's desk…yes, he'd call him Shigeo from now on.
"My meter! Not again!" said the client before they ran out the door. Reigen closed the door after them and sighed. Touichirou just stared at him. Reigen stared right back.
They didn't look a thing alike.
"What? Something on my face?" asked Reigen. Touichirou shook his head.
"No, your face is normal. You smell, though, like the inside of mother's handbag." Said Touichirou. Reigen lifted and arm and smelled himself.
"That would be the incense and oil." Said Reigen
"Why do you smell like incense and oil?" asked Touichirou
"Because I've just spent the past hour rubbing knots the size of tennis balls out of people's backs." Said Reigen
"Is that what you do?" asked Touichirou
"A little of this, a little of that. Mostly backrubs, some photo editing, and then your basic seances and exorcisms." Said Reigen
"But…you're not a psychic or even a medium." Said Touichirou
"Well, alright, Mob and…someone else who works here usually handle that kind of stuff." Said Reigen
"Someone else works here?" asked Touichirou as he looked around. This place didn't look like it could fit two people let alone three.
"Sometimes, he won't be coming in today. I just figured that it would be a little…cramped…with you around." said Reigen
"You could have just left me behind then. I don't need to be here." Said Touichirou
"Again, not leaving you alone in my apartment. Besides, it's nice, isn't it? Being able to get out of the house and take in the future? Or were you just planning on playing videogames all day?" asked Reigen. Yes, that was exactly what Touichirou had been planning, but now that Reigen had just come out and said it the whole plan sounded a little bit…dumb.
"Is that what you're planning on doing, rubbing backs all day?" asked Touichirou
"It pays the bills." Said Reigen
"Is this what you always wanted to do with your life?" asked Touichirou. Reigen shook his head and fished around his coat pocket.
"Nope, but this is what I wound up doing." Said Reigen as he pulled a cigarette out of the box in his hands and held it between his teeth. Touichirou had the sudden urge to take up smoking. He looked away. Smoking was a nasty habit, Mother and Father had said so.
"Well then what did you want to do with your life before this?" asked Touichirou as he made the pencils on his desk stand on their points, mostly just so that he had something to do.
"A lot of things. I was going to be on TV, I really wanted to be famous, but my parents wanted me to be a lawyer and then a businessman, and…well I was stuck in a really crappy job for a while but then I kind of fell into this place and here I am." Said Reigen as he exhaled. The room was filled with the smell of smoking. Touichirou didn't mind it that much.
"And it…doesn't bother you? knowing that you failed at everything that you had set your mind to and now you're stuck here living this excuse for a life?" asked Touichirou
"I didn't fail anything, I'm just still figuring out what I want to do." Said Reigen
"But you're older than I am! I mean, than I am right now, I mean the version of me you know. Not this version of me." said Touichirou
"So? There's not a set year when you have to have your entire life planned out." Said Reigen. That…didn't make sense. It wasn't 'you' who planned your life out to begin with, your life was planned out for you. You went to school, got good grades, got into a good university, and then you got a good job and got married and had children. That was just how life went. Father had even said so, you either did as well or better than your father had, and Touichirou…he had always wanted to do better. He had always known that he would do better.
He had always known that he would either leave this world behind or take it over, and since wanting to become an astronaut had been a stupid goal the only thing that left him with was taking over the world, and if he couldn't even do that….
"Well, I have my entire life planned out. I'm going to take over the world…I mean I was going to…I don't know. I'm going to do something, though, and…and maybe I'll even learn from my mistakes!" said Touichirou before jumping to his feet. Reigen rolled his eyes and ashed in the wastepaper basket beside the desk despite the fact that doing so was a massive fire hazard.
"Sure, you are, sure you are. So, do you think that you can occupy yourself for a little while longer? I've got to get through these standing appointments and then I'll lock up early. That'll give me plenty of time to figure out something more permanent for you." said Reigen. Touichirou shook his head.
"I don't need you to figure something permanent out for me, I'll go home when I'm ready…somehow." said Touichirou
"Sure, alright, but can you keep yourself occupied while I finish up these appointments? Without doodling all over Mob's desk?" asked Reigen. Touichirou covered what he had done with his arm.
"I wasn't doodling, that was just…a thing that had happened…and no, I can't occupy myself. I forgot my Walkman." Said Touichirou quietly. He hated when he forgot things. Any moment now Reigen was going to tell him what an idiot he'd been. He braced himself, it was always so difficult to control his powers when he was being dressed down even when it was rightfully happening. He braced himself for what was going to come, a harsh-
-rectangle on his desk.
"Here, you can listen to music on my laptop, but don't do anything else, alright?" asked Reigen as he opened the rectangle and…and Touichirou was never going to get over how thin screens were in the future. He'd seen a portable computer once, on a showroom floor, and it had been a lot larger than this and the screen had been a lot smaller…and it hadn't had color, either.
The future was truly an amazing place.
"Stay on my Spotify, alright? Don't mess with anything else. Don't even think about messing with anything else." Said Reigen. Touichirou didn't know what Reigen meant by that, this was in and of it's self amazing. A pair of headphones was tossed at him. Reigen showed him now to navigate this thing…this thing with every single song ever made on it. This put his collection to shame, but then again so did Fukuda's music collection so that wasn't saying much. He had never seen so much music in one place before! And the fidelity was even better than the CD player he wasn't supposed to use but did anyway when Father wasn't home! This was amazing.
The future was amazing, computers were amazing, and even if his life may not have been amazing it's wasn't world endingly bad. He was truly a fan of the future…some aspects of it, anyway.