"Can I put this up in your window?"

Ritsu never missed a chance to warn people about the evil organization. That was the good thing about working for Reigen, he got to use the printers as much as he needed to. Also there were ramen dinners sometimes but mostly he liked being able to use the printer whenever he needed to…which was always. He liked to carry at least ten fliers with him at all times. Ten of his fliers, not the Spirits and Such fliers, though Reigen always made sure that he carried a few around with him just in case.

Just in case times like these happened.

"Sure kid, whatever." Said the guy working behind the counter. He wasn't really paying attention, that was good, if he had been paying attention then he would have asked to see what it was that Ritsu wanted to put up in his window. Not everyone wanted a big red flier telling them that there were people waiting to kidnap them and use them for experiments and stuff. Also not every wanted a picture of Reigen making his serious face ad promising you twenty percent off your next exorcism either. This was a new ramen place. The one that they went to already had one of his fliers in the window and a Spirits and Such one too. Most of the places near work did. He had to expand outwards.

He had to warn everyone.

They were there. There was an evil organization right under their feet and nobody even knew! There were espers that walked around kidnapping people and using them for experiments and…and nobody had the first clue! Ok, it was kind of hard to believe but…but he had to do what he had to do! And telling people to their faces just made him look crazy so fliers were the next best thing.

If he could warn one person then he was doing the best that he could.

He taped two fliers up in the window. One for Spirits and Such and one warning people about the evil organization of espers right there waiting to kidnap all of them and take over the world. He took a different flier down to make room for his, someone had lost their fish, and he didn't feel bad about it. If someone had lost a fish then either they didn't know how fish worked or they were just bad at having pets. The evil organization was more important than some moron's lost fish. Kidnapped people and world domination were more important than someone's run away fish.

And so was a coupon promising twenty percent off your first exorcism for this month only.

Ritsu took a step back and admired his handiwork. That was good. Straight and right at eyelevel. Well at his eyelevel anyway. He had done his best and his best had to be good enough. Reigen could always fix it on their way out if he didn't like it…but Ritsu knew that he would. He was always happy when Ritsu did stuff like that. Adults loved it when he was helpful.

They were so easy to please.

So long as you did what they wanted, before then even asked sometimes, then they would be happy. That was what they cared about, you listening to them. They never listened to you but you were expected to listen to them. That was because they were older and stuff. Because they had been born first they thought that they knew everything and you knew nothing. That made them easy. As long as you smiled and did what they wanted then…well then you could do whatever you wanted.

Like warn everyone about the evil organization of espers that was lying in wait right in the city…and also eat a full ramen dinner right before your actual dinner.

A full ramen dinner with six slices of pork….and an egg too.

"Thanks." Said Ritsu as he climbed up onto the stool next to Reigen. He didn't need Reigen to hold it steady for him…but if he wanted to help then that was fine. Ritsu could have gotten up there eventually. He wasn't as short as he used to be…these stools were just really tall.

"You're welcome. You earned it. The way you took care of that spirit-" said Reigen

"Not so loud! Do you want THEM to hear you!?" whispered Ritsu. He looked around and felt the room with his aura. There were just normal people…the whole room was normal people…but there was something tugging at the edges of his…aura? Perceptions? It was like lying in bed at night and hearing the bathroom sink drip. Like he could just hear it dripping and it was just annoying enough for him to hear it but not annoying enough for him to do something about it.

Not that he ever did anything when he could feel one of them near.

He always just acted natural until either he lost them or they went away. Normally they just watched him at his house or at school or the park or something. They never did anything but sit there and watch. They wouldn't take him if he didn't give them a reason…and he never did. He never used his powers when he could feel them close. He wasn't stupid. He knew that he couldn't fight any of them if he tried. For as much as he could do exorcising spirits and bending spoons alone in his room he couldn't do anything real with his powers.

Like lifting something as heavy as a person…

"Right, right, sorry. The evil organization lurks behind every corner." Said Reigen

"Not every single corner. They aren't here right now but I can feel one of them near so just be quiet." Said Ritsu

"Ok, ok, this is me shutting up." Said Reigen

"If you were really shutting up then you wouldn't have said that." Said Ritsu

"Ok, I'm shutting up for real now." Said Reigen

"Thank you." Said Ritsu

"You're welcome….ok! Ok! Sorry. Actually shutting up this time!" said Reigen. People were looking at them now, Reigen had been kind of loud like normal, but Ritsu didn't mind. As long as nobody was going to kick them out or kidnap them for evil experiments then he was happy…and if Reigen had to talk then…well that was ok so long as he didn't get either of them kidnapped.

"….I guess that you don't have to shut all the way up but…don't talk about them, not when I say that they're near." Said Ritsu. He didn't feel like having another silent meal. He got enough of that at home…and also silence didn't fit with Reigen. Reigen and silence went as well together as pork feet and…well anything that wasn't pork feet.

"Right, because they'll capture us." Said Reigen

"Me, probably. You don't have any powers so they'll leave you alone…maybe. I don't know. I never stopped to talk to one of them." Said Ritsu. The only one of them that he had ever stopped and talked to had been that red haired guy….Sho…and even that had barely been a talk. It had been more like hitting his head and then being told some crazy stuff that both made no sense and then all the sense in the world…and also feeling some stuff that made no sense but also all the sense in the world. Like…he knew that holding hands was not the thing to think about when it came to that day…but he couldn't stop thinking about it. He had held hands with Sho…who was another guy…and he had liked it…and that had led him to this and….yeah.

Sho had given him a lot to think about.

"Well if they ever do come for you don't worry. I got you." Said Reigen. He patted Ritsu on the back when he said that…which was nice…but it didn't mean anything. Ritsu knew that if anything happened then he would most likely have ended up being the one who had to protect Reigen.

"What could you possibly do?" asked Ritsu

"I was on the kendo team in high school for about a month. I can't let that go to waste." Said Reigen

"I thought you had a green belt in judo. Wouldn't that help you more?" asked Ritsu

"I…almost had a green belt in judo. Almost." Said Reigen with a shrug. A lot of Reigen's stories ended in almosts. He almost got a green belt and he almost finished school and…well there were a lot of almosts. Ritsu didn't know much about almosts. Mom and dad never let him have almosts. He had to finish everything he started and he had to do it perfectly, good enough for two people, too….since he had to be two people.

Himself and…his sister.

"Why don't you ever finish anything?" asked Ritsu

"Look who's talking." Said Reigen as he motioned to the almost full bowl of ramen in front of Ritsu. He wasn't eating slowly. Reigen just ate like he was afraid someone was going to come and steal his food from him.

"No, I didn't mean food. I meant why do you keep on starting so many things and stopping them. You stopped going to kendo and judo and law school and selling water coolers. Why do you keep on starting and stopping things like that?" asked Ritsu

"I…guess that I'm just trying to figure myself out, you know? I'm just trying to figure out what I want out of my life. It's…kind of hard to describe. You'll know the feeling when you get to be an adult." Said Reigen

"I don't think that I'll ever know that feeling." Said Ritsu

"Hey…it's ok. I know how it looks now. You've spent your whole life doing what your parents told you to do and you've been living your life their way and that's how it goes when you're a kid. Your parents are just trying to make the best life for you that they can…but your life is your own. When you get to be an adult it'll hit you that you can do whatever you want, be whoever you want to be, and…well there's going to be a few years before you figure out exactly who you are and who you want to be. That's all. They're going to be some hard years, believe me I know, but it'll all be worth it in the end." Said Reigen

"I guess." Said Ritsu. He didn't think that Reigen's life and his life were anywhere near the same. Sure Reigen could go and say that his life was his own but he didn't have to be two people. Ritsu had to be himself and his sister at the same time. That meant that he had to make mom and dad double proud and live up to all the potential that people kept on telling him that he had, too. He didn't think that mom and dad would let him just pick stuff up and put it down whenever he felt like it. Especially things like school. He already knew where he was going to middle school, Salt because it was close to home, and then he would go to Black Pepper for high school for the same reason. Then he would go to Tokyo University because it was the best school ever and mom and dad would tell him what to study and then what job to get and they'd probably send Tsubomi to live with him and marry him too since they decided, well the whole world had decided, that she was his girlfriend and then he would have to have kids with her and work all the time like mom and dad did all while dodging the evil organization and-

He drank his ramen broth.

He knew that it was backwards, drinking the broth while there was still food in the bowl, but he liked the broth. It was best when there was still food in the bowl. The food kept the broth hot. There was nothing worse than cold ramen broth…well maybe cold ramen brother from that cheap kind of cup noodle that mom kept on buying because it was cheap. The kind that tasted like cardboard and misery.

This was good. It tasted like pork and all good things tasted like pork…aside from pork feet.

"Now, my young apprentice, I have a question for you….are you going to finish that?" asked Reigen as Ritsu put his bowl down. He didn't say anything, he just covered his bowl with his chopsticks. Reigen got the message and left Ritsu to eat his food at a normal pace. He didn't have to be home until six, he didn't have to rush, he could sit and enjoy what he was eating…well he could try to enjoy what he was eating….

It was a little hard to enjoy his meal when he could feel….whatever that was.

It was familiar. It was…and was not…familiar. He could see red out of the corner of his…well not his eye. He came across the word metaphysical a lot in his research…and that was what this was. He could see it metaphysically out the corner of his metaphysical eye. Red. That was…normal. The people who followed him around had red auras. The internet hadn't been helpful at all about what the colors meant. Red could have meant hostility or it could have meant good fortune or determination or maybe just someone who was born under a certain star. He didn't much care what red meant…because he already knew what red meant.

Red meant Claw.

They wore red, a lot of them, the ones that he'd seen. The ones that hadn't made much of an effort at hiding. They wore these red jumpsuits. Some of them wore black and red, and some of them wore blue and red, but mostly he had seen just plain red. Red with this weird symbol on it. Like the character for curse with an eye and…yeah. It was weird. He sometimes saw that symbol in weird places around town. Like carved into the wall of the boy's bathroom at the park or the bottom shelf of the bookcases in the outer space section of the library…he even saw it doodled in the margins of really old books too, sometimes, like when the library threw out really old books and they let you have them….

The conspiracy was older and went deeper than he had ever imagined.

So did the stalking. He knew that they stalked him, and had been for a while, and he knew that he hadn't given them any reason to take him….yet…and he wasn't going to. He was going to go home and just…act natural until they got bored and went to wherever they came from. He wished that he had asked Sho exactly where these people were coming from, like an address or something, but he hadn't even though to do that. His head had been hurting and his heart had been hurting and…and then Sho went and did crazy stuff and told him crazy stuff that was somehow true and then…well it had been a crazy day and he hadn't been thinking…

But he was thinking now.

He knew that Reigen was a normal person and he knew that if it came down to a fight he would be the one keeping Reigen safe, not the other way around, and he didn't want to have to look out for him right now. Ritsu just wanted to make it home and just…sit in his room and wait whoever this was out. This was a new aura, a new kind of red, and it felt….bigger…than any of the others that had followed him around before.

This was bad.

"I can walk home from here." Said Ritsu as he and Reigen got ready to part ways. The aura was getting closer…and it showed no signs of stopping. He didn't want to put Reigen in the middle of this. Even if he did have powers, spiritual ones, they were nothing like psychic powers and he would have just ended up getting hurt. If he got hurt then Ritsu was back to playing house with Tsubomi all afternoon…and also he would have maybe missed Reigen a little bit too.

"Are you sure? What if the evil organization-" said Reigen. He used that tone again, the one that he used when he was kidding around…but there was no kidding around. Not when it came to Claw. This was serious. There was an ancient conspiracy…or at least a really old one….and they kidnapped people for experiments and world domination. This was not the thing to joke about…and not the thing for Reigen to get mixed up in either.

"I'll be fine, I'll see you tomorrow." Said Ritsu. Technically he was supposed to go to cram school tomorrow but…well he didn't need it….and also hanging out with Reigen was way more fun than cram school anyway. He would need all the fun that he could get if he was going to spend another night with some stalked camped outside of his house.

Those nights were never fun.

Neither were the days he spent walking home as fast as he could. He knew that he was strong, a lot of espers couldn't even exorcise spirits from their own powers like that without help….and he could put up invisible walls too….and he hoped that it would be enough…that what he could do would be enough….enough for what he didn't really want to know. To fight? To get away? To not end up another picture up in the family shrine? Mom and dad…they wouldn't have been able to go on if he disappeared. He could never have been able to live with himself if he did something like that to them.

He walked faster.

Towards the red aura. If he walked away from it then…well if he walked away from it then it would look like he was running away. Like he could see and sense auras. Like he had powers. Nobody could know that he had powers. Even if all of this would have ended….no. He couldn't think like that. Sure it was kind of exhausting being stalked all the time and always having to watch his back but it was better than winding up in a bunch of experiments and kidnapped away from his family….they may have been annoying but he loved mom and dad….and even Tsubomi too even if it wasn't in the way that she loved him. If he just didn't come home one day…even if he was getting really tired of being stalked…then…well then that would have been hard on everyone…

And it would have been hard for him, too.

So he kept on walking. All he had to do was walk right past the aura that was coming. That was all. He had to walk right past it like he didn't even notice it. Like he was just passing by any other person on the street. Like he didn't know about espers or Claw or…or any of that. He just had to keep walking and…and….and…and he….

He didn't know if he could keep walking.

There. That was…he knew that aura. He knew that aura and he knew that person. That was…there was red. A red aura and red hair…that was the first thing he noticed. All the red. The next thing he noticed was green…green and white…that coat. He knew that coat. That coat and that hair and those eyes…he knew those eyes…he'd been seeing those in his dreams for the past…almost a year. Those eyes and that hair and that coat and….and he knew that person….

He knew….he knew that voice….

"Hey! It's you again!"