Teru turned thirteen on April 13th.

That was how Reigen had remembered it. Thirteen on thirteen. Easy…well, mostly. He had originally thought that it had been in March, three thirteen, Ritsu had cleared that up for him. Reigen thanked God that he had only gotten Teru his present, not a cake or anything. A present could easily be hidden in Reigen's closet of mystery. The sudden appearance of a cake, on the other hand, would have sent a very clear message to Teru.

That another adult in his life had forgotten all about him.

That was the only word for it, really. Forgetting. These people had forgotten that they even had a son. They never wrote, never called, and he was pretty sure that Teru's rent and allowance were on an autopay thing. The message was always the same. 'We hope this finds you well'. Or at least that was what Teru had translated for him. They hoped that the money found their twelve, no, thirteen year old son well. Hoped. They never visited, never checked in on him. If they had lifted even a single finger, asked a neighbor to so much as knock on his door, then they would have realized that they were paying rent to an empty apartment.

Teru had been living with Reigen, a man that they didn't even know, for months now and they had no clue.

Forgotten….that was what Teru was. Well legally speaking he was abandoned. Thirteen was too young to live away from his parents. Legally and morally. Reigen wasn't that kind of lawyer, he was barely any kind of layer, but he was confident that in the case of Seasoning City Social Services versus the Hanazawa family that social services would have won. Easily. There hadn't even been any attempt to hide-

Reigen needed a cigarette.

He rolled out of bed. Five fifty in the morning. He didn't have to be up for another ten minutes. Quick enough to have most of a cigarette. He had been close to quitting this time. He had always gotten close to quitting but never quite managed to make it. It was just too hard and Reigen…well he had a lot going on. Running a business, keeping his head above water, keeping Teru and Ritsu out of trouble…by the time he was thirty he was going to have a full head of grey hair. Or maybe silver because he was blond.

As if Teru would ever have let it come to that.

No, Teru would never have let him out of the house like that. Reigen swore that the kid must have been a girl in a past life. Never in his life had he met someone so…into…their appearance as Teru was. The entire bathroom had been taken over by so many…Reigen didn't even know whats. Lotions and creams and sprays and powders and combs and three different hair tools that Reigen still didn't know the use of. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that Teru's wardrobe had pretty much taken over the whole living room.

Teru needed his own room.

Reigen grabbed his hoodie from his desk chair and pulled it over his head. It was cold out there in April and he didn't feel like digging through the closet for his coat. Teru had put it away, again. Reigen had always just sort of kept his things around, here and there. Mom had been forever telling him to 'find a home for it, Arataka'. She would have loved Teru. Reigen shook his head. Mom wouldn't have just loved Teru, she would have put a potato sack over his head and carried him away. She had been badgering him about grandkids for years now…

This probably wasn't what she'd had in mind.

"Damn it, Teru." Said Reigen as he crossed the living room. Teru's futon was folded up in the corner, his bedding placed neatly on top like this was a hotel or something. His pajamas had been tossed into his hamper and his clothes for the day, the ones he left on the couch, were gone. Well someone had decided to start his day early. Reigen still could have stepped out onto the balcony to have a smoke but…no. That would have set a terrible example.

Reigen didn't get to set a terrible example. Not when he had, sort of had, kids.

He could have gone around the corner, smoked in the alley behind the building, but that would have been too much. He didn't like leaving Teru alone. He had been left alone for long enough. He needed to know that Reigen would always be there. That was what the websites had said. Kids like Teru often had abandonment issues and attachment issues. The last thing Reigen wanted to do was make whatever he had going on in his head worse.

Poor kid had enough problems as it was.

"Er war ein Punker….Und er lebte in der großen Stadt…Es war in Wien, war Vienna…" Teru's vice carried from the bathroom. Reigen shook his head. Well it looked like he wouldn't be getting at the bathroom anytime soon either. They were going to need to work out some kind of timer system or something. He had no idea what Teru did in there for so long, just that it involved every single product he owned and it took all morning. Reigen needed to get at the bathroom, he had a client that morning and he needed to shave. Brushing his teeth might have been in order, too, it couldn't have hurt. Not enough time for a shower, though….

They needed a second bathroom.

They needed a hell of a lot more rooms besides a second bathroom. Teru needed his own room. Reigen had offered Teru his but Teru…well he had been VERY insistent that he take the living room. It wouldn't have been fair, he had said, to kick Reigen out of his bedroom, especially over a temporary arrangement. The plan had been for Teru to go bac home when it was safe, when he was sure that the heat was off. That had been back in December. There were still plenty of cultist or whatever around. They were easy to spot when you knew what to look for. They wore a lot of red, and some of them wore blue ribbons around their necks. They had been coming out more and more since the weather had started getting nice….the weather would only get nicer and then more and more of those people would be out…

This wasn't temporary….but Teru didn't need to worry about that now. Not on his birthday.

"Hey, any chance I'll be able to shave this morning?" asked Reigen as he knocked on the bathroom door. Teru stopped singing….Reigen knew that song from somewhere…well it wasn't important. What was important was getting on with his morning. He had to get ready for work. Teru had to get ready for school. There was also the matter of Teru's birthday gift. It had been taking up space in his closet for a month now. He needed his shelf back…and Teru, well Teru was going to love his gift. Reigen couldn't wait to see the look on his face. It had been hard tracking down this particular version of what Teru called 'an underrated horror classic' as well as a VCR that could play it…VCRs had somehow gotten more expensive over the years…but it was going to be worth it to see the look on Teru's face. Was this how parents felt? Or maybe he just liked the kid. He deserved to have a good birthday, especially since it seemed like his parents were too busy with their rich people jet setting lifestyle to remember that they even had a son. Reigen sighed. Even if he lived for a thousand years he would never understand some people.

Especially thirteen-year-old boys who took at least an hour every morning to get ready.

"I'm almost done, wait a minute." Said Teru as he opened the door. He had something green all over his face, some of his hair was in curlers, and his eyebrows had tape over them for some reason. Reigen didn't know what this was about and he didn't want to know. The last time he'd asked he wound up getting his hair combed for an hour and a long lecture about why three-in-one was worse than not used anything at all.

"Is this wait a minute like 'I need another half hour' or wait a minute like 'I'll be right out'?" asked Reigen. Teru thought for a moment.

"…ten minutes. I just need to let this sit on my skin and finish my hair." Said Teru. Reigen decided to give him fifteen before he knocked again.

"Alright, but I'll knock again in fifteen minutes. Anyway what do you want for breakfast? Anything you want, you're the birthday boy." Said Reigen

"I was going to make myself an egg white omelet and some green juice." Said Teru. Reigen caught himself before he stuck out his tongue. The egg white omelet was alright…if you were eighty….but the green juice was something straight from the bowels of hell. It was just juiced grass and kale…how Teru could keep it down Reigen would never know.

If there was one thing that Reigen had learned in his time with kids is that they were committed to setting new standards of weirdness.

"Are you sure you don't want an actual breakfast? Pancakes? Waffles? An omelet with a yolk in it?" asked Reigen. Now it was Teru's turn to stick out his tongue.

"No way." said Teru. Reigen rolled his eyes.

"You know it's not going to kill you to eat actual food everyone once in a while, right?" asked Reigen

"It'll kill my social life. I'm already all broken out, I'm not going to make it any worse. Besides, I have a date tonight." Said Teru. Reigen blinked. Well then…he was never going to get used to that. When he had been thirteen, not that he had gone on many dates back then, he would have done anything to avoid using that word…and he would have done anything to avoid talking to his mom about his romantic life. Not that he and Teru had that kind of relationship. He should have been happy, actually, that Teru was comfortable enough to talk about…these kinds of things…with him.

Even though he really didn't want to think about that aspect of Teru's life.

"Oh, I hadn't realized that you and Ritsu had plans." Said Reigen. He hoped that whatever plans those two had they stayed either right at the Kageyama house or here. He knew what Teru had gotten up to before. The cheating…well now they called it an open relationship….these kids were thirteen going on thirty. Open relationships….dating….he didn't know what he was going to do with these kids.

"No, not with him." said Teru. Reigen nodded. The important thing was not to shame him. He hadn't even needed to read the websites to know that…well they had helped. Ritsu and Teru were not going to have easy lives ahead of them, not in the world that they were living in nowadays. Maybe the future would be better. Reigen didn't know, he only pretended to be able to see the future. He wasn't an actual medium or psychic but he didn't need to be one to see that people…they were slow to change.

Ritsu and Teru…they were confident…and that was always a good thing.

Even when it seemed like it shouldn't have been. Ritsu and Teru, after the big cheating debacle, had decided to open up their relationship. They were together but they were allowed to date other people. Reigen didn't know how two kids their age made it work, hell even as an adult he had no idea how that would have worked, and he was…proud…of them. He may not have been ok with what they did, how they were so committed to acting like they were adults, but he could admire their confidence….

They knew exactly who they were and who they wanted to be…and that was much more than Reigen could have said about himself at thirteen…or even now.

"Oh. So you're seeing that girl…Maya…again?" asked Reigen. Supportive…he was going to try and be supportive. Even though the thought of Teru with a girl was terrifying. This was why his mom had told him to stay away from girls until university. Teru…was way too young to be doing what he was doing! Even the nurse at the clinic had given him weird looks and being nonjudgmental was in her job description. Teru…for his own good he needed to stay away from girls until he was Reigen's age. He knew that Teru knew about being safe but…he was still way too young for all of this!

"Maya was last week. This is Yuki. She's in middle school." Said Teru

"Well just…be safe, I guess." Said Reigen with a shrug. What else could he do? Put a some kind of girl repulsion curse on Teru? He was way too young…but of course he didn't see it going that way. Thirteen going on thirty, that was what Teru was.

Or maybe not.

"I-I'm not even…I don't know if she wants to…I have to get ready! Stop distracting me!" said Teru before he slammed the door in Reigen's face. Nope. Still thirteen. Well that was a relief. He had said, before, back when they had been cleaning up the aftermath of the biggest mistake of Teru's life that he wasn't ever going to do that again. That it had hurt too much. That he'd been expecting a happy ending, to get the girl and live happily ever after. He had learned, at twelve, how messy life could be. How you could love someone, do something incredibly intimate with them, and then have them walk right out your front door.

Teru was too young to be dealing with this.

Reigen decided to get started on breakfast. There was no reason the birthday boy had to make his own breakfast. Egg white omelets and green juice….not exactly the breakfast of champions but it would do. If Teru wanted to eat like he was middle aged with a heart condition then that was his right. Reigen wanted to tell him that he had his whole life ahead of him to worry about this stuff. Eating right, being neat, dating and relationships but he knew that it was just going to go in one ear and out the other.

He'd been thirteen once. He knew how it went.

Back when he'd been thirteen he'd been sneaking Mom's cigarettes, sneaking out of the house, trying to meet girls, stealing candy from the convenience store down the street, sleeping through classes, pretending to be a psychic on the internet…kid stuff. Stupid kid stuff. Kids these days were growing up too fast…or maybe that was just the ones that he knew. Ritsu and Teru weren't exactly normal kids and they didn't exactly have normal problems. He wished that he could have just built them some kind of fortress to keep the world out, the cultists and evil organizations and whoever else would hurt them, but he couldn't. You couldn't forsake the journey for the safety of your room or something like that….he couldn't remember the exact quote. He just knew that he couldn't teach Ritsu and Teru to live their lives in fear. Life was to live and those two were living it, and on their terms too. Reigen wished that he had that kind of confidence…that he'd had it when he'd been their age and that he had it now…

Maybe they weren't growing up too fast, maybe he had ben growing up too slowly.

Well, if eating like this meant that he was growing up too slowly then he was changing his name to Peter Pan. He plated up Teru's breakfast for him and left it on the table before going to the cabinet to make his own breakfast. Frosted Sugar Bombs now with extra marshmallows….oh God, he was a kid. He suddenly had the urge to eat a salad and talk about the weather…he eyed the green juice. Tomorrow. He would eat like a healthy adult tomorrow. Right now he needed to finish up with breakfast.

Well not right now.

"All yours, and you didn't even have to knock." Said Teru as he walked into the kitchen clean, dressed, and ready for the day. When Reigen had been thirteen Mom used to have to drag him out of bed by his ankle and, on more than one occasion, wrestle him into his gakuran. Teru was too young for a middle school uniform, and Black Vinegar had actual clothes that people would want to wear in their lives as it's uniform instead of those stiff collared torture devices, but Reigen got the feeling that this was going to be par for the course with Teru even as he made it to middle school.

They grew up so fast.

"It's been more than fifteen minutes but since it's your birthday I'll let it go…now hold off on breakfast." Said Reigen

"Why?" asked Teru

"Well it's your birthday, isn't it? You can't have a birthday without presents." Said Reigen before he made his way back to his room. Teru had better have liked this thing…and if not then…well Reigen had wasted a lot of money. Maybe he should have just gotten him a gift card or something. That was what Ritsu got every year…well unless he felt like climbing out of a second story window in his pajama pants and hoodie this was going to be Teru's gift.

He'd better have liked this.

"Happy birthday." Said Reigen as he put the box down in front of Teru. He didn't say anything, he just started to unwrap it…slowly. He took the tape off slowly, and then the paper, and then he folded it. Reigen had no idea what was up with this kid. He couldn't have been expecting Reigen to want to reuse the wrapping paper…right? He knew that his living situation wasn't exactly what Teru was used to but surely Teru knew that they weren't THAT poor…

Right?

"You know that I'm not going to save the paper, right? I got it at the hundred yen store. Feel free to, you know, actually open your gift." Said Reigen

"That's uncivilized." Said Teru. Reigen swore that he was moving even more slowly, now, just to spite him. Reigen mimed looking down at his watch and then made the 'hurry up' motion. Teru rolled his eyes and took off the last of the paper. He wasn't nearly so delicate with the tape on the reused Amazon box underneath the paper. He tore right into that…

And then stopped.

"If you don't like it-" said Reigen

"Oh my God." Said Teru

"I can always get you-" said Reigen

"Ich glaub mich knutscht ein Elch!" said Teru

"…something else." Said Reigen. He had no idea if that was good or bad, what he had just said. Teru slipped out of Japanese when he was pissed…or happy…Reigen really needed to invest in a German to Japanese dictionary. Teru wasn't giving any indication of what he was feeling. He was just staring, now, at his gift…Reigen had gotten the right thing, right? That tape had been hell to track down and a region free VCR had been damn near impossible….next year he was getting Teru a Lush gift card or…or something….

Something that wasn't going to make him cry.

"Teru…are you….is everything alright? If you don't like it then I can just get you a gift card or something." Said Reigen.

"Nein! I mean no…no, this is….this is the original Flying Dead Pig with the weird parts still in…and that one scene…well I'm not telling you. If I tell you then you're not going to watch it with me…do you want to watch it with me? Sorry, sorry, I know that you're busy and-" said Teru

"I'm never too busy for you, you know that." Said Reigen. Teru didn't say anything. He just wiped his eyes, stood up, and hugged Reigen. He was a lot stronger than he looked, or maybe it was just his powers. Reigen hugged him back as best as he could. Even though the hug went on for what could only be called 'too long'…

When was the last time anyone had hugged this kid?

"Sorry just…thanks. I mean most of the time people just send me money…well my parents, I mean so...so thanks….thank you…um…yeah." Said Teru as they broke apart. Reigen reached up to ruffle his hair. He knew that Teru hated that, that was the point. He just had to break up this awkwardness somehow…even though there was nothing awkward about wanting some basic affection…

If Reigen ever met the Hanazawa's then…words would be said. Many words.

"Reigen! I just got my hair right!" said Teru

"Sorry, sorry. Anyway, eat up, I know you've got a big day ahead of you. Birthday plans with that girl and school and all…though if you have the time maybe you could see if Ritsu wanted to come by. You two could have a sleepover." Said Reigen, omitting the fact that he would be right there with them. He wanted them in one place where he could make sure that they were safe and not out there putting themselves in harm's way. Teru was smarter than Ritsu, or eat least he had more common sense, when it came to antagonizing Claw anyway….the thought of Ritsu out there on his own….it wasn't good.

"Maybe if it doesn't go well. I've been meaning to introduce you both to actually good movies…or maybe I could reschedule. I don't know yet, I haven't decided." Said Teru before he tucked into his breakfast. Reigen did the same. Well that tender moment was clearly over with and now it was back to business as usual.

"Whatever you want, Teru, it's your birthday after all." said Reigen. Maybe he could sweeten the deal if he told Teru that he'd be sitting in his room with the door closed…ajar…but with headphones in. He didn't want to give Teru and Ritsu carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, they were just kids after all, but they were getting older and…and that was just something that Reigen was going to have to expect. The kids were getting older. Next would be Ritsu's thirteenth birthday…and then Teru was going to be turning fourteen….where was the time going?

Teru was going to turn fourteen on April 13th of next year…Reigen hoped that his next birthday went as well as this one had.