Reigen Arataka would do anything to make a quick buck.

Mom had said so, and in English too. Apparently the phrase didn't translate well to Japanese. What was the Japanese equivalent to a buck, the American dollar? Something like a hundred yen coin? Yeah, too wordy, much too wordy. You didn't want to be too wordy, just the right amount of wordy. Reigen had been just the right amount of wordy when he'd told Mom to mind her own business. It had come to that. She kind of had a point, maybe, if you ignored most of what she said. Reigen didn't really have time for his old hustles. School had taken it's toll, and then establishing himself…well that was still taking it's toll…he didn't really have time to also rub backs and give exorcisms…but it brought in some extra money.

Reigen did have an extra mouth to feed, after all.

"Careful!" said Reigen as he ducked. Teru may have cost an arm and a leg to feed, seriously how could teenage boys eat much, but he did earn his keep. It would have taken Reigen over and hour to carry all of these boxes on his own. All Teru had to do was wave his hand and up the stairs they went.

Reigen had made sure to lock the door, of course.

No clients were scheduled for a while but he did get a lot of walk-ins. Legal Services and Such, you're one stop shop for all your legal needs. And such. Right now the such was going to be iodine. Apparently there was a worldwide shortage of the stuff. Reigen had no idea why. The only thing this stuff was good for was cleaning cuts and they had better creams for that now. Ones that didn't burn when your mom poured them onto your scrapes and bruises. Maybe there was some other use for it…like…an internet thing? Like when there had been that run on detergent a few years back…

Hopefully this stuff was safer to drink.

"We are being careful." Said Ritsu as he walked past Reigen, his nose buried in his phone and his hand held above his head. He only had one box, and he practically dropped it on the floor, but he was still helping. Reigen wasn't about to go and tell Ritsu that Teru had this on his own. No way was he risking Ritsu leaving. He'd been on those weird forums again, Reigen had heard the kids talking, and whenever Ritsu was on those weird forums he got all kinds of ideas…

Reigen was not chasing those two out into the woods again.

"Well be extra careful! That's a lot of money worth of iodine in there. If this thing works out then, let me tell you, we're going to be rich!" said Reigen. Ritsu shrugged.

"Teru's already rich." Said Ritsu. Reigen's smile didn't waver. Ok, yeah, Teru did really well for himself…but that didn't mean that the rest of them did. He was doing better than he had before but having another mouth to feed…well it added up. Plus the rent on the bigger apartment. They needed the two bedrooms, Teru most definitely needed some actual privacy, and they needed to be closer to Teru's school too. He shouldn't have had to take the train for an hour each way. Teru still got his allowance from his parents, Reigen didn't know how he would have survived if he had to clothed Teru on top of everything else, but it did kind of add up…

But that was what side hustles were for.

"Don't be classless." Said Teru as he picked up all the boxes and rearranged them into a perfect cube. He looked over his shoulder when he finished. Ritsu didn't even glance upwards. Even Reigen felt that. Ritsu had never been the most open and emotional of kids but, really, he could have at least smiled.

But this was Ritsu he was talking about. Teru would have had better luck catching a Tsuchinoko.

"I can't help it, I'm poor." Said Ritsu

"You are not, don't exaggerate." Said Teru

"You said it, not me." Said Ritsu

"When did I call you poor?" asked Teru

"When you said my house was 'quaint'." Said Ritsu

"I didn't mean it like-" said Teru

"Hey Teru, great job with the boxes. I didn't know you could lift so much at once." Said Reigen quickly. He didn't know if they were bickering or fighting. It was a thin line between the two when it came to their relationship.

"That's just a cube, I can do better than that." Said Ritsu. He held his phone in one hand and, finally, looked up from it. Reigen had read that there was an epidemic of eye strain with the younger people as a result of constant smartphone usage. He was inclined to believe it, especially with how much Ritsu was squinting.

Or maybe he was just trying to concentrate.

Teru's handiwork began to undo its self. The boxes flew up, shakily, into the air. Reigen crossed his fingers. He wasn't going to say anything to undermine Ritsu's confidence in himself. This was a very critical age, or so the parenting books had said, though Reigen didn't really need a book to tell him not to put a kid down. He'd been through enough of that with Mom and Dad. Everything about him was wrong in his parents' eyes. His career, his apartment, his suit, his tone of voice…even the way he ordered his ramen! Really Arataka, do you need all those toppings?

Yes, yes he did.

Ramen, good ramen, required toppings. Meat mostly but veggies were good too, he had to set a good example after all. Reigen was a grown man who made his own money and he could order his ramen however he liked and…and he was a grown man and grown men did not argue with the versions of their parents they kept in their heads. They also didn't fight with their parents in real life no matter how much those parents deserved it. He couldn't change Mom and Dad but he could do better for his own pseudo kids.

Though he didn't want to encourage Ritsu to be reckless with hundreds of thousands of yen worth of iodine.

"Hey Ritsu, maybe try and be careful with that." Said Reigen as the boxes arranged themselves into a pyramid. Two were left over, Ritsu had apparently underestimated how low the ceiling way. Rather than redo the whole thing he just let those boxes hit the ground with a crash. Reigen winced and bit his nails. That was…that might now have been good….

But that had been a lot for Ritsu so…encourage him?

"Ritsu, that was really-" said Reigen

"You call that being careful?" asked Teru. Ritsu rolled his eyes and looked back down at his phone. Reigen leaned over…maybe too far. Ritsu held his phone close to his chest. Reigen quickly went back to his own personal space. It didn't look like Ritsu had been on that one weird forum again…but what did Reigen know? He didn't hang out in those corners of the internet…and Ritsu shouldn't have been either.

"I didn't break anything, did I?" asked Ritsu

"Well you could have." Said Teru

"But I didn't." said Ritsu

"But you could have." Said Teru

"But I-" said Ritsu

"So! Is that all of it or do we have more boxes in the stairwell?" asked Reigen quickly. Bickering could so quickly turn to fighting with those two. Sometimes he wondered, to himself of course, why they were even together. They fought like cats and dogs sometimes, first of all, and second of all he knew for a fact that Teru saw other people. Nothing brought that fact to stark reality like coming home and finding a tie around the door. Reigen hadn't known what to do with that one. Teru wasn't his kid and neither was Ritsu. If those two wanted to be in a 'bicker all the time' open relationship then who was he to say anything?

"What are you even going to do with all of this?" asked Teru as he stacked the boxes up in the storage room. It made Reigen nervous, a little, seeing him use his powers to do so. Those boxes were marked 'fragile' for a reason after all. He couldn't afford to break even a single bottle. Reigen still needed his side hustles, though not all of them were spirit based. Some one them were just side hustles.

Side hustles which toed the line of 'price gouging' but side hustles nonetheless.

"We, Teru, what are we going to do with all of this?" asked Reigen in full showman mode…something that was lost on the kids. Either they were getting too old for this or he needed to come up with a new schtick.

"I don't know, I asked you first." Said Teru

"We are going to-" said Reigen

"Give ourselves thyroid cancer?" asked Ritsu

"…what?" asked Reigen. Well that had been kind of a downer. Where did Ritsu even come up with this stuff…oh. Ritsu held out his phone. Apparently too much of this stuff was really bad for your thyroid…but it wasn't like anyone was going to be drinking this, right?

There had been that thing with the detergent a little while back….

"Macabre." Said Teru with a wave of his hand. He didn't think that Teru had pronounced it correctly but the sentiment still stood.

"Yeah, I know that it's getting close to Halloween and all, Ritsu, but come on. Lighten up a little." Said Reigen

"That's what happens when you drink too much iodine. It's not my fault reality can be kind of morbid." Said Ritsu

"Reigen, you're not actually going to drink this, are you? I mean I have no idea why you would but if you wanted to cleanse I have a great juice, well it's mostly just wheatgrass and lemon root, but-" said Teru. Reigen held up both hands in the universal gesture of surrender. He would rather have drank the iodine, it probably tasted a hell of a lot better and sat easier in your stomach.

"No, no, that's ok! Now as I was saying before I was interrupted-" said Reigen

"We didn't interrupt you, you asked a question." Said Ritsu, being a little smartass, and he knew it too! Reigen knew that face, he'd seen it plenty of times before. That was the closest that Ritsu ever got to smiling. Well…at least Teru was smiling too, even if he shouldn't have encouraged Ritsu to be a smartass like that. It was actually kind of cute, the way those two looked at each other sometimes…

But they could look at each other some other time, right now there was serious work to do!

"Yeah, well, it was a rhetorical question." Said Reigen

"It didn't sound like a rhetorical question to me." Said Ritsu

"Well it was." Said Reigen

"Are you sure you know what that word means?" asked Ritsu. Teru laughed, there, he did that thing where he hid his mouth behind his hand and laughed. Ritsu smiled, actually smiled, at him. That was so precious…but also so…well kind of not. Not at their age, not with the things that Reigen knew. Part of him wanted to look out for Ritsu, for both of them really, to take them and shake them and tell them that they were too young for all of this. To bury them in salt and exorcise the unexorcisable from them…to do the impossible.

And it was impossible.

And not just because he didn't have psychic powers. He was beyond pretending that he did, and he never should have lied to Ritsu in the first place. He may not have had psychic powers but he shouldn't have had to pretend to in order to get Ritsu, the both of them, to listen. They were too damn young to be messing around with all of this. He didn't think that Teru and Ritsu were…well he didn't want details, of course, but he knew that they weren't sitting on opposite sides of the room weaving baskets when Reigen wasn't around. They were too young for all of that. Ritsu was too young for all of that. Maybe it was because Ritsu was still only twelve, or maybe because he had known Ritsu since he was a little kid, or maybe just because Reigen knew Ritsu better but…well he worried.

For Ritsu. For Teru. For both of them.

But telling teenagers not to do what teenagers did was like telling the sun not to rise. It wasn't going to happen. He couldn't watch them twenty four hours a day, it would have been weird if he'd tried, but he could do his best to keep them safe. From heartbreak, which came from that kind of relationship, but also from their own reckless stupidity. He knew those two and they were going to go rushing into things just like they had gone rushing into things against Claw…but at least he'd known what to do, somewhat, with those people.

Teenage hormones, first loves, all of that…Reigen could safely say that he was totally out of his depth and he wasn't sure how well he could wing it this time.

"Come on you two, knock it off. This is serious work we do. Now, as you both know there's a massive iodine shortage growing in the world." Said Reigen, putting some showmanship into it even if the kids had grown past it. He hadn't, damn it, and in the great tradition of parents and people who practically were parents he was going to cling to his kids' childhood for as long as he possibly could.

"And Baramycin…someone's got one hell of a scrape." Said Teru

"Or a cut." Said Ritsu

"Or a-" said Teru

"Anyway! As you two know there's a big demand for iodine but not a big supply, which is where we come in. I'd give it a couple weeks before we're rolling in…ok. Ritsu, what's that look?" asked Reigen. Ritsu was staring at him like he was crazy. What? It was a good plan? Hadn't these kids ever heard of supply and demand? Well when demand exceeded supply then they could make out like bandits and Reigen could then supply all the ramen toppings that those two demanded. Even the extra, extra, extra pork that Ritsu liked. There would have been a fourth extra but the ramen shop wasn't comfortable selling that much pork to one person.

"Isn't that price gouging?" asked Ritsu

"Legally it's only price gouging if there's been a natural disaster, and there hasn't been, at least to my knowledge." Said Reigen

"What about that hoodie you have with the dog on it?" asked Teru

"That hoodie is a national treasure. Anyway, back to our brilliant plan-" said Reigen

"But isn't it still wrong? This stuff is useful as medicine. Should we really be hoarding like this?" asked Ritsu

"Legally it's not hoarding unless we go above and beyond what we can immediately use for the purposes of selling in an expected shortage…but we have just enough to skirt under the law." Said Reigen. That didn't seem to satisfy Ritsu. He just stood there with his hand on his hip looking like a disappointed mother. Honestly it was kind of getting to him. Reigen worried for Ritsu and Teru's future kids. There was no way they were getting anything past their Dad…one of their dads. Teru looked like he could have cared less.

"You know if you really need the money I have plenty of it. Mom and Dad upped my allowance since they missed…since I'm in middle school now." said Teru. Reigen felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He could have sworn he saw gold, for a second. It passed quickly. Ritsu and Teru were looking at each other now but saying nothing…well they didn't have to say anything, now did they?

Reigen was never going to understand all of this, auras and powers, for as long as he lived.

"You want to have a sleepover? If Reigen's done explaining price gouging to us, that is." Said Ritsu

"You two…it's not price gouging. We're just taking advantage of a gap in the…market." Said Reigen. Ok, yeah, when Ritsu said it so plainly and looked at him like that….yeah. The whole plan was kind of shady when he thought about it…well he had known before, back when he'd been planning, that he'd been planning something shady.

Why was his first impulse to be shady?

He had no idea. Maybe it was some kind of deep, psychological thing that he needed to work through with a professional. He made money, decent money, but there could always be more…but he could always hustle more instead of setting up side hustles.

He had to set a good example for the kids, after all.

"I'll donate it to the hospital, then, if it means so much to you two. Jeez, Ritsu, when did you get so moral." Said Reigen

"I haven't changed one bit." Said Ritsu. Reigen…well he wasn't going to argue with that. Ritsu wasn't that same kid he'd met all those years ago but that was just how growing up worked…Reigen almost felt like calling his mom. Almost.

"I don't really care, just don't make me carry all of that home. We don't have room. We barely have room for just us." Said Teru

"You used to live in a one room, what are you complaining about?" asked Ritsu. Reigen also wanted to know what Teru was complaining about. If anyone'd had to downsize it had been Reigen. Teru had practically moved a museum into their apartment.

"At least I didn't have to deal with anyone else's stuff but my own. You would not believe how many plants Reigen has. They're taking over." Said Teru

"So…it's happening?" asked Ritsu. Teru rolled his eyes. Ritsu shrugged. Reigen didn't get it, but he wasn't meant to. That was their inside joke. It was, like many things in their relationship, kind of cute. He was happy that they'd found love, the middle school equivalent of it, and he wanted them to be happy…but they were moving way too fast…

Or this was just how it felt when your kids grew up.

"Shut up, it's a good movie. You just don't get it. It's not my fault you have no taste." Said Teru. Reigen decided to keep his mouth shut about taste. He'd sat through enough black and white silent movies to know all about Teru's 'taste'.

"Are you sure you aren't thinking of yourself?" asked Ritsu, rolling his eyes. For a minute he actually looked his age. Just a moment, though, regular, world weary, Ritsu was back.

"Are you sure you aren't-" said Teru

"Ok! Since that plan's dead in the water who wants to help me organize paperwork? I have a client coming later today and-" said Reigen

"I have soccer." Said Teru quickly. Reigen kept quiet about the fact that they lived together and he'd seen Teru's massive color coded schedule. Soccer was every other day. Also Teru was in charge of bringing the orange slices, which mean that Reigen was in charge of bringing the orange slices. The kids had not been into the sliced starfruit and durian….though with some powdered sugar it hadn't been that bad…maybe he could jazz the orange slices up a little…

"I just don't want to." Said Ritsu, always the honest one. Reigen wondered if he was supposed to encourage this or not. On the one hand he was telling the truth but on the other hand there was such a thing as tact. You wouldn't get very far in this world if you didn't know how to talk to people…

Though then again Ritsu did have psychic powers and he was smart enough that he'd argued his way into early middle school admission so, yeah, he'd probably be fine.

"There's ramen in it for whoever helps." Said Reigen with a sigh. These kids were going to eat him out of house and home. Especially Ritsu with his four times extra pork. At least Teru mostly lived on veggies…though those could add up, too, since he always had to get fancy with it…kids. He loved these kids but they were driving him crazy.

He wouldn't have had it any other way.

They were good kids, better than he'd been at their age. He didn't always understand them but he was proud of them…even if they worried him sometimes. A lot of the times. He didn't understand their relationship, he didn't get their in jokes, and he wasn't entirely sure when Ritsu had gotten so moral and upright but he loved them and he would have done anything for them.

Even give up what could have been a very lucrative side hustle.