Spirits and Such didn't just do exorcisms and backrubs.

Of course Serizawa just did the exorcisms, and only when Miss Kageyama, no, Mob wasn't around. When Mob was around, sometimes she wasn't and sometimes she was, his job was to make tea, greet customers, hand out questionnaires, and beat people up who looked like they were bad news. Serizawa still hadn't had to do the last part, he wasn't even sure if that was one of his official duties. Miss Kurata, no, Tome had told him to do that and he wasn't sure if she outranked him. She'd been there longer but she was just an unpaid intern, Mob and Miss Reigen had said.

Her job was to file, not his, but he could help. She couldn't, however, put him to all of her work while she read manga and played videogames. Miss Reigen had been clear about that. This was not a social club, she had said. It felt like it sometimes, especially when all the girls were around at once. Rei didn't even work there officially, she just sort of hung out and decorated sometimes. She was there the least, Mob was there the most, Tome was there sometimes, and Miss Reigen was there all the time, it was her business after all.

She did the most. She did back rubs and shoulder rubs and head rubs, mostly, but she also read people's palms and cards and stars and futures and pasts and all of that. Well Miss Kurosaki, no, Rei read their futures when she was there but when she wasn't that job fell to Miss Reigen. She could read the future in tarot cards, which seemed complicated, palms, which seemed really complicated, and tea leaves, which seemed like something beyond human comprehension.

That was what they were doing now, well she was doing. She was teaching the girls to read their tea leaves. He was just watching them, a full cup of tea on his desk. He wanted to join them gathered around the office coffee table but there wasn't enough space and they were in the middle of it anyway so he would have just been bothering them. He could still see them from his desk, though. Miss Reigen was in her fortune teller costume. It looked nice on her.

Her shirt was loose and billowy, it hung off her shoulders and dipped kind of low…not that he was looking at her or anything like that! She just looked pretty. She looked pretty with the sparkly scarf thing tied around her waist and her super long skirt. She had her hair tied back with a scarf, too, but some of it got out and was hanging by her face….she was so pretty…

Oh no, she saw him looking!

"Hey, get over here! You're missing out on valuable life skills!" said Reigen maybe a little too loudly. She was teaching the girls to read tea leaves, a valuable skill if there ever was. She felt something draping over her and when she focused she could make out a purple haze. His aura. Mob could see it, too, based on the expression she wore. Reigen had known Mob long enough to be able to at least somewhat read the kid.

The slight narrowing of her eyes.

What was she so jealous of? She was not being replaced! Just because Reigen didn't have Mob risking her life day in and day out anymore did not mean that she didn't still like the kid.

"Do these look like anything, Master?" asked Mob holding out her cup. She liked Serizawa enough but she didn't like the way he was looking at Master Reigen. Not at all. The way his aura kept on moving towards her…not that she didn't want Master Reigen to be happy or anything! She just wanted…she wanted things to stay the same or get better. New friends were good but those new friends had never been boys. Well there was Teru but he…well he was different. That entire situation was different. Mob would never, ever, leave Master Reigen, not again. She had enough of that after their big fight.

Even if Teru married Mob and they had four kids, she wanted at least four, she would never go her separate ways from Master Reigen.

"You've got to see for yourself. What you see is personal to you, Mob." Said Reigen. She saw that look, the little one Mob gave. She was such a kid sometimes…not that Reigen could blame her. She'd have to talk to Mob about this again. No man would ever come between them, how much clearer could she be?

"I see….Mob, you're going to have toast for breakfast tomorrow." Said Rei

"Hey, no cheating!" said Tome

"I was not! See, those look like little toasts with bites taken out of them." Said Rei pointing to the inside of Mob's cup. Reigen looked down to see…they looked more like birds but that was not her cup to be interpreting.

"I do like to have toast for breakfast, but I have a full box of cereal at home. Why would I have toast?" asked Mob

"Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe because she saw toast in your tea cup you…eat…toast." Said Serizawa. Now they were all looking at him. He shifted in place.

"That makes sense." Said Mob. It did and she should be nice. She liked Serizawa, of course she was going to be nice to him. Especially if Master Reigen ended up liking him. Which Tome swore that she did, and Rei said that there was a strong probability that Master Reigen and him would end up going out, so of course that was something that Mob just had to get used to.

But it was hard.

"Serizawa, seriously, get over here. Come on, let's see what's in your future." Said Reigen. Not that she was trying to be pushy or anything. He could do whatever he wanted, his life was his own…but it would be good for his social development to…have some work interactions with his coworkers and boss. Yes. That made perfect sense.

"You're going to cut yourself shaving tomorrow. There's going to be a lot of blood and it's going to get on your undershirt." Said Rei, her aura flashing orange.

"Oh…thank you." Said Serizawa. He walked over to the sitting area where they were all gathered. Miss Reigen scooted over, obviously to make room for him, so he sat down next to her. It was the polite thing to do.

"Master Reigen meant the future in the tea leaves." Said Mob

"We don't even need tea leaves, we have Rei. Hey, how do I do on tomorrow's math test?" asked Tome

"You barely pass." Said Rei. She shook her head. She could feel a headache coming on. Looking into the future could be so taxing sometimes.

"By how much?" asked Tome

"Check the tea, Tome, Rei's getting a headache. Or better yet study harder next time." Said Reigen as she poured Serizawa a cup of tea. He took it and began to drink. It wasn't that hot, the kettle had been off the heating part for a while.

"Slow down, you've got to leave a tablespoon at the bottom of your cup." Said Reigen putting her hand on his tea cup. A fake, a replica of what an actual set of fine china would look like. White with a gold rim and pale pink flowers on the front, an Amazon impulse buy. He was holding it as if it were an actual piece of fine china, though. Her hand touched his on the cup. He was holding it so delicately, as if it mattered if the damn thing shattered.

Still, it was nice of him…to care like that.

"I'm sorry, it's just very good tea." Said Serizawa. Not like when he made it. He was still working out the kinks. Miss Kageyama, no, Mob had shown him how to make tea a few times but it was just so…well for him it was hard. She never got upset with him, though, even though his tea was always somehow weak and burnt at the same time.

But she did get mad at him sometimes, it seemed, and he didn't know why. Well not mad…but he could see her aura and it flared sometimes when he made his presence known. It was…kind of rippling now. She was looking at him.

"Thank you." Said Mob after a moment. They were already touching hands? She and Teru had taken weeks to hold hands. Adults moved fast, very fast.

"I still think that we should drink white tea instead of green tea. It's just a fancier tea." Said Rei. Wow. They touched hands. This was so beautiful! Touching hands over warm cups of tea…white tea was the much better, fancier, and more romantic option though.

"That's too hard to make." Said Mob. Mom had shown her time and time again how to make white tea and it never came out right. Mob could only do green tea, black tea, raspberry tea, and sleepy time goodnight tea.

"…it gets more difficult?" asked Serizawa as Miss Reigen took his cup and poured his tea out into the saucer. He grimaced as the cup clinked against the saucer. He hoped that it didn't chip. It was a really pretty cup. Like her.

Don't think about her like that, Katsuya.

"Oh yeah, way more difficult. That's why I just get my tea on the outside. What's the point of making something at home when there's a perfectly good convenience store down the street?" asked Tome. Those two were giving her cavities. Honestly, they should just confess and get down to it already. Adults moved so slow…and it made no sense! They only had so much time left before they got old and died! And Mob was following this example. Rei too, but not as much.

People were so weird sometimes.

"Convenience." Said Reigen as she handed Serizawa back his cup. He smiled then, at that. Mob was smiling too. Either Reigen had finally gotten Mob to appreciate humor or she was coming around to Serizawa, one of the two. Reigen would still talk to her later, when the others weren't around, but she wouldn't push. She read on those parenting blogs, not that she was ready to be a parent or anything, that the feelings of jealousy that Mob had were normal because she saw Reigen in a guiding role and was afraid of losing her….which she didn't need to be up until one in the morning reading parenting blogs to have found out.

Of course some hours were spent down the Read-It rabbit hole. People were wrong on the internet, they needed correcting…but maybe not for quit so long…

She couldn't wait for people to stop talking about her one and only television appearance.

"What do you see?" asked Mob leaning over. If she had to guess she'd say there was something involving…globs of tea leaves….in his future. No wait, she was supposed to see shapes. Baby squids? Chicken pox? The seeds on top of hamburger buns?

There was a reason why Mob was the spirits and Master Reigen was the such.

"The grim specter of death?" asked Tome. Reigen tapped her on the head with barely any force but Tome still acted like she had been beaten over the head with a two by four.

"If I have brain damage-" said Tome

"Then I'd suggest you see a doctor about that." Said Reigen

"I don't think that you do. You seem normal to me." Said Mob

"Normal for you." Said Rei clearly kidding. Tome was alright but weirder than even Mob, sometimes. Not that Mob was super weird, just a little weird. She'd seen weirder. Like the time that Go and Takeshi decided to work on combining their powers by first combining their lives so they'd be more synchronized…Rei still wasn't sure how copying each other all the time would help them make fire tornadoes…but it had been weird. They even started calling themselves Go-keshi. Heh.

She missed those guys sometimes.

"All of you suck." Said Tome

"You swallow." Said Mob. Everyone stared at her. Tome paused for a moment before laughing louder than was necessary. Serizawa stared at her in horror. Rei his her head in her hands. Master Reigen just shook her head.

"Mob, do you have any idea what that means?" asked Reigen. This was, most likely, a Mob-ism. Mob-isms were things that Mob picked up in the course of her life and said without knowing the context of.

"You're too little!" said Serizawa. She was just a kid, barely older than Sho. This just made Tome laugh more. Rei had pulled her sweater up over her face.

"Don't tell her." pleaded Rei. How could Mob be so immature? She sounded just like the guys when they thought she wasn't listening.

"Sho says that all the time when Ritsu tells him he sucks." Said Mob genuinely not getting it. Sho said it all the time and if it wasn't ok Ritsu would have told him so. Ritsu never had a problem telling Sho when he was being weird or just too much. That was what best friends did for one another. Of course she had just said something wrong again…at least her friends wouldn't laugh at her…and better to mess up around people that she knew would not laugh at her.

Tome didn't count. Tome laughed at everything. Teru even had a word for it, when she laughed at others, in his language. Schadenfreude, shameful joy.

"I'll talk to Sho. He shouldn't talk that way around girls." Said Serizawa. Not that he could tell Sho what to do, nobody could tell Sho what to do, Sho didn't even tell himself what to do. Well Sho had said that but Serizawa didn't exactly know what that one was supposed to mean…but the bottom line was that he was the adult and he needed to make sure that Sho could at least function in society, and that meant being polite to and around girls. They were sensitive about that sort of thing, he had gathered. Not that he had much experience with them. They seemed really sensitive about that stuff, though.

"Hey! We can take it! We're not delicate little flowers!" said Tome. She prepared to show off her rather 'colorful' vocabulary but Reigen didn't need to have clairvoyance to know what was coming. She reached over and covered Tome's mouth.

"Do I need to get the swear jar out again? Because I could really use a new pair shoes." Said Reigen. Tome glared at her.

"And don't you dare lick my hand again." Said Reigen

"She's not going to, I can tell." Said Rei helpfully. Reigen took her hand away. Tome rolled her eyes.

"I wasn't going to say anything." Said Tome when Reigen took her hand away. Well she was going to say a lot but she wasn't going to give Rei the satisfaction of being right.

"Yes you were." Said Rei simply. Serizawa couldn't help it, he really couldn't. He laughed, just a little, because they were just so adorable. Miss Kur-Tome glared at him.

"…I will destroy you…" said Tome darkly

"She doesn't mean it. Tome just says things like that sometimes but she doesn't mean it." Said Mob

"If you're going to be destroying each other do it outside, I'm not having this office rebuilt again. I really don't think the insurance will cover it." said Reigen

"You never know." Said Tome with a shrug. Reigen rolled her eyes. Mob looked between the two of them.

"Also, Mob, to be safe don't repeat anything your little brother's friend says." Said Reigen

"Why?" asked Mob genuinely not getting it.

"Because boys are gross and immature. Oh! No offense!" said Rei as Serizawa ducked his head.

"Yeah, you're one of the good ones." Said Tome with a wave of her hand.

"Um…thank you?" asked Serizawa not sure if he wanted to be a credit to his gender.

"Really, you're very nice and you dress nice and you're never immature, ever, and your tea making is just fine…um….and you're really tall…um." Said Rei quickly.

"He's punctual too." Said Mob trying to be nice.

"And he keeps me from being accused of sex discrimination." Said Reigen. That got her a few giggles.

"Oh grow up you three." Said Reigen

"Sorry Master, but you said-"said Mob

"Kids! Honestly. Get your minds out of the gutter and back on your tea cups." Said Reigen. There was some tea cup gazing. Tome held hers close and turned it around and around. Mob studied hers intently. Rei shook her head. Serizawa shared her sentiments.

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to be seeing. All he saw were a bunch of abstract shapes.

"Remember, the handle it you. Go clockwise. Things to the left are the past and things to the right are the present. The closer they are to the handle the more important they are." Said Reigen

"Most of mine are to the left, Master. See, that's an explosion…that's a running shoe…that looks like a bent spoon…I don't have a lot on the future side. All I have is that blob…" said Mob. Reigen leaned over.

"Well most of your past is more towards the bottom. Remember, the closer to the bottom it is the more in the past it is. That blob looks kind of like…hmm….it's pretty round." Said Reigen

"Maybe it's a movie. Teru wants me to go to the movies with him this weekend…." Said Mob quietly. Well he said watch a movie, which may have meant coming over, but it also may have meant going out…but it meant spending time with him, that was the good part. She looked over towards Serizawa.

If Master Reigen wasn't jealous then she wouldn't be jealous either.

"I think it looks like a ring. Maybe he'll ask you to marry him!" said Rei, hearts practically in her eyes. Love was such a beautiful thing!

The table jumped.

"What?!" asked Mob. No way, too much, way too much. Besides, she was only fourteen. That was probably illegal or something! And what would she tell her parents?

"Get the ring first, always get the ring first. That way if he breaks it off you still have the ring." Said Tome

"Congratulations!" said Serizawa, mostly because it was socially appropriate. Was that even allowed, though? Well either way he'd be happy for his new friend.

"Um….sorry. I can't see that far into the future." Said Rei

"Mob, calm down. You're fourteen. Most grown men won't even commit that much, let alone a middle schooler. Honestly I think it looks like plate, you might end up getting dinner. Either way tell me how it goes." Said Reigen. These kids read too much Shoujo, it was rotting their brains. At least Mob wasn't fully gone. Heh. Mob married…the thought is bittersweet. She'd grow up, hell, she was growing up. All the kids were. That was a good thing. Mob would grow up and probably get married and have her own family and her own life…but hopefully there'd still be a place in it for Reigen.

Because this was nice. Her, the kids, Serizawa. Just a nice afternoon together. She was more grateful for these. She had taken them for granted, before, her afternoons with Mob back before all of this. Those could have been taken away so easily…and not just because of that stupid fight that they had.

She looked towards Serizawa. Yes. She so easily could have…but she's there and she's fine. She's sitting there with Serizawa and the girls and everything was fine. The girls were talking about Mob's big date, now. Good for Mob. Haystack was a good kid. A terrible flirt, suicidally overconfident, and probably colorblind but he was a genuinely nice kid. He made Mob happy, that was the big thing. After all of that insanity was over and they were back to their normal lives. No, their improved lives.

She's maybe staring at him.

"I….I have no idea what I'm looking at." Said Serizawa. It was all just abstract shapes to him. The kids were talking about what they saw and what it meant, apparently Tome was seeing the grim specter of death everywhere, but he didn't see anything.

"Here, let me see." Said Reigen. She put her hand on the cup, her fingers over his. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. This was so dumb. She was his BOSS. She was like the President, untouchable. Maybe this was just some kind of transference or something. Maybe she was just what the President was to him…

But she was nothing like Suzuki.

She was so brave and…and she had almost died for her friends…these kids. Suzuki beat his own son half to death…and he had done nothing to stop it…but she had tried to shoot Suzuki with a toy gun…and when that didn't work she actually offered to…to actually…

And now that woman, that brave woman, was sitting there next to him.

Because of him. Because he had been brave enough to save her life. Because he had been brave enough to go up against the most powerful…he sees Mob's aura flare as her friend teases her…second most powerful being on Earth. Miss Reigen was alive because of him…wow. He saved a life! He tries to focus on that. Not the fact that she's so close. Not the fact that her fingers are touching his. Not the fact that she smells like cigarettes but it's so…nice.

He tries to focus on what she's saying.

"….mostly in your past. That's good. The recent past, too. Wow, you actually got a lot going on in the recent past. The far past…I'm seeing something big and then a whole lot of nothing. I mean, we both know what that probably is…but there's a lot in your future." Said Reigen. She was this close for professional reasons, that was all. Really. That was all. Not because he made her feel safe….he had saved her from….and not because he was so, well…there was something about him…and not just looks wise….

Stop it, Arataki. He doesn't need this right now.

Grateful. She's just grateful that he saved her life. That's all.

"Is that bad?" asked Serizawa

"Well you tell me. Do you see anything bad? Don't try to make the leaves say anything, just go with it." Said Reigen. Serizawa tried to heed her sage wisdom. If there was truth to clairvoyance then there was truth to divination. Probably.

"I see…it looks like people…and buildings….and that one looks kind of like the sun…" said Serizawa focusing on the leaves and not how close she was. Closer, now. He could feel her hair resting on his side.

"That's great! Maybe it's about how successful you'll be at rejoining society. I mean, it's spread through the near and far future, and you're already doing pretty well." Said Reigen scooting away because, well, she had been in his space.

"….I don't really think that I am-" said Serizawa

"Think positive! You're doing great. You've got a job, friends, and you won over my army of teenage girls. You're doing great." Said Reigen meaning every word of it. All things considered the guy should have been a complete and total mess but he was doing just fine. A job, friends, teenage girls accepting you…what more could a person want?

Don't think about him like that, Arataki.

"Th-thank you! Mi-Miss Reigen." Said Serizawa. She really thought so well of him? Her? He smiled, just a little. He felt an aura against his. Mob was looking at him. She was blank as always, her face anyway. Her aura was…calm. That was good. That was nice. He did so want them to be friends.

She had been the one to show him what real friendship was.

Reigen watched Mob watching Serizawa. She had seen enough of her Mob expressions to know that she was…ok. Not that little jealous looks she had been giving before. Good. Maybe she wouldn't have to have that Master/Student talk later about how no matter what she'd never, ever, be replaced. If Reigen could see Mob's tea cup she probably would have seen a future full of people who cared about her and good experiences and everything that the kid deserved.

Maybe Reigen would even have been in there, too.

Who, besides Rei, actually knew what the future held?

She didn't look at her own tea cup.