A/N: Some sweet stuff to make up for the past angst.
Also, implied assumed-one-sided-mutual-puppy-love Serirei at the end, I guess.
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Mob's explosion disturbed more than the ground.
Many of the resting dead arose after the incredible display of otherworldly power. Tome-san took it upon herself to settle them back in again, whether they be a group of relatives centuries dead or a single unfortunate taken recently by illness. Mob wanted to enjoy finally seeing the other inhabitants of the graveyard, but he knew it wasn't for the right reason.
He apologized whenever to whoever he could.
But, as it happened, one spirit he did not draw from the earth, and he had to meet him a different way.
"Shishou."
Reigen paused spreading grass seeds on the barren earth. A little way closer to the fence, Mob knelt down and brushed at the earth, his bag of straw off his shoulder.
"What's this? Is it part of a grave?"
Reigen joined Mob to see whatever he was talking about. There, half-sunken in the soil, was a metallic plate. It was about as big as a bicycle wheel, and oddly showed no signs of wear, as if no matter how old and neglected it became it was meant to last. Mob attempted to dig out the other portion and see the full engraving on the surface.
"I've never seen a burial site like that before," Reigen admitted as Mob uncovered the ruins on the plate. "I think it might be something like a religious marker instead."
What was written on the surface apparently was not important enough for common people to read. The full engraving was composed of strange, unfamiliar characters, something like what a religious sect would use. Mob furrowed his brows as he tried to decipher the ancient embossment.
"Do you know what it says?"
"My specialty is spirits, not linguistics." Unfortunately, Reigen could not.
"Oh, but this part." Mob pointed to the words at the bottom in characters they both could recognize. "That means 'entrance,' doesn't it?"
"Ah, yes, but it could be used poetically," Reigen said with flourish and hand motions. "Like entrance into the afterlife, or peace, or…"
While Reigen was busy doing whatever he thought he had to, Mob caught the bottom of the plate with his fingers. He pulled, and the plate popped up like a bottle cap, revealing a hole.
Reigen hushed his mouth immediately and crowded Mob by the uncovered hole. He peered down into the darkness, and he could just see the bottom a few meters down.
"So… It is a physical entrance."
A wet, sucking feeling came from the space. It was almost like a throat—like the very earth was living and breathing and omnipresent. Mob alone felt the miasma from the hole, and a hallowed expression crossed his face.
"Shishou, someone is down there."
Reigen glanced a moment at Mob, then back to the hole. He whipped away faster than a striking snake, that half-sincere charisma he got when Mob pointed out spirits in his poise. He smiled, yet also somehow grimaced, which is something only he seemed able to do.
"Yes, evil spirits love to attach to these types of things," Reigen cut up bits of things he had read into a coherent sentence, somehow. "They— "
"No," Mob halted the hilariously terrible falsities with a single word. "It's a person."
Mob wasted no time and slipped into the opening. Reigen's perfect explanations went up in scraps as he scrambled to watch Mob enter the hole, very real concern gripping like icicles on his heart.
"Mob, be careful!" he called after him. "You don't know what's down there!"
"I will."
Mob squinted against the darkness (it would have really helped if Reigen did not decide to block the sunlight by practically leaning his whole body into the hole). The deepness into the ground was about two or three times his height, and the width of the area was no greater than that of the entrance. Mob tried to pinpoint where he felt the aura of another person, and that is when he found the start of a tunnel.
"Shishou," Mob told Reigen where he was going. "There is a tunnel that looks like it goes towards the center of the graveyard. I'm going to follow it."
"Be careful," Reigen repeated. "If you get stuck down there, I'll have to dig up the whole graveyard to get to you.
That was an exaggeration, and if Mob got stuck he could just move the dirt with his powers to get out, but it was not important to mention.
The tunnel was adequately compact to make most people uncomfortable, but Mob was, well, Mob. He crouched and navigated the small space with only a soft feeling of curiosity, and that was sated soon enough.
Mob got just far enough away from Reigen for the echo of his footsteps to die when the ghost appeared. He arose from the dark as a white, feverish form: much like Tome-san, although very much unlike her. He was too tall to fit inside the tunnel, and part of his legs remained in the ground.
"Please… Don't go any further."
Mob stopped at his request. The man-shape materialized further, into something similar to what he seemed to be like in life. He came into view as a rather young-looking man with an odd maturity hanging around his shoulders. He had hair and whiskers in terrible need of trimming, and worry vibrated his very being. That is mostly what he was. Worry.
"I beg of you."
An orange orb nestled near his dead heart. It looked like a tomato that had long over-ripened, and Mob witnessed it flare with a multitude of colors across the shinning surface.
Mob voiced the sense he got from the orb, "Oh, you're a psychic too."
The man startled at Mob's response. The orb beat like it wanted to pop, but the man shielded it with his hands, a nostalgic and bitter pain crossing his face.
"Yes, I was."
Mob allowed the man to settle his emotions. The orb was stilled.
There was some heartache in his words. It was like for some reason other than his clearly young death that he saw potential in his life lost. Like, even if he had lived, he was cursed to be something he did not want to be.
Like he was scared of himself.
Mob did not want to disrespect his polite request of not advancing further, but his sentiments were stirring, and he did not know what to do about it. Unused sympathy cumbered about his insides.
"What's your name?"
It was all Mob could think to say. The man turned on himself shyly, but then a sudden resilience came, and Mob could see how forced it was. He did not want to be strict.
"Serizawa, but please—you have to leave. Something terrible rests here."
Mob looked to the dark space behind Serizawa's form. Unless he was talking about himself or the other spirits in the graveyard, Mob felt nothing out of the ordinary. What did he mean?
"What does?"
"What is sealed beneath the shrine," Serizawa explained in a quick, panicked voice. "I cannot allow it to be released, by you or anyone else."
That must be why he prevented Mob from proceeding. The tunnel led to the earth below the shrine, and he did not want Mob freeing whatever was there.
"Is it an evil spirit?"
Before he could answer, Mob heard Reigen yelling into the hole.
"Mob, are you okay?"
Serizawa perked like he had been caught—or like he recognized Reigen's screaming as his mothers. He backed deeper into the tunnel and started to fade out, pleading to Mob with his eyes and words.
"Please, trust me. Do not allow it to awaken."
He vanished into the dark. Not wanting to worry his guardian, and without anything else to do, Mob returned to the entrance, despite his mishmash of emotions and burning questions.
"Did you find anything?" Even though Mob could get out of the hole with his powers, Reigen hoisted him up (and almost strained his back in the process). Reigen's touch was comforting, however, and it helped shake the worry from Serizawa that had bled over to Mob.
"Gold, silver, rubies?"
"Nothing like that," Mob regretfully informed him. "There was just a spirit. He said his name was Serizawa."
After running a spirit consultation business for years, that was something that surprised Reigen. It lasted less than half a second, so quickly that Mob was not sure it had even happened and assumed he had misread his reaction. He was just as soon his normal self, and interest covered his nerves.
"Oh, really?"
"Other than that, it was just dirt and bugs," Mob thought at the last second to omit what Serizawa told him; it seemed like information only for him, something not to share, yet he did not understand why it read that way. "We should seal it again."
With the mention of insects, Reigen did not hesitate. He slammed the plate back on the hole and piled on handfuls of dirt, a nervous sweat starting.
"Yes, most definitely! We do not want people falling in!"
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"Katsuya!" Tome-san's eyes lit up when she realized who Mob was talking about. "Yes, I know him."
She sat perched on her headstone like a little bird, motioning back to the house behind her.
"His family was the last one hired to groundskeep, and they lived there before Arataka moved in. They also went to high school together."
She propped her chin up with her elbow, her expression now grave (while being on her grave).
"Other than that, his story is rather sad. Katsuya has always been an anxious individual, and that sometimes made his psychic powers act out. He worried he was going to hurt those around him, or the peaceful spirits in the graveyard. It made him sort of reclusive."
She shook her head.
"That didn't help him at all. He was afraid of growing up and going out in the world. He wanted to take over the groundskeeping job his father had when he graduated, but…"
She paused to recognize her grief.
"He died the summer after he did—I think his appendix ruptured. After that, his family moved away, and Arataka took over the house. I think because he feels like he never properly served the graveyard like he wanted to, he's doing what he can now."
Mob watched her odd sadness—the dead mourning the dead. Tome-san smoothed out her phantom kimono and straighten up on her headstone, her eyes shut and stature like stone.
"It is terrible to be scared of yourself, because that is the hardest thing to change."
Her pale eyes opened, meeting those of the boy before her.
"Mob… Promise me something."
Her vaporous hand brushed over his hair in a motherly manor. The strands displaced only slightly, and a chill zipped up his spine from her cold presence. Tome-san smiled and laughed a little as he shivered like a wet kitten.
"Do not push people out of your life because you think you do not deserve them. Be a coward, for goodness sake—do not hide away pieces of who you are because you think it is honorable. Never regret who you are."
Her hands cupped around his little round face.
"You are going to live with yourself for the rest of your life. You might as well make them someone you like."
Her ghostly lips pecked his forehead. Mob shivered again, and she laughed again, holding out his face to view him fully.
"Can you promise me that? Can you try to love who you are?"
Mob nodded once, and his chin easily passed through her hands.
"Yes, Tome-san."
He was determined not to disappoint her.
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"He went to school with me, and I knew his family. That was it."
If 'that was it,' Reigen would not have been so defensive. Reigen told Mob that he met Serizawa in high school, that Serizawa was where he learned of psychic powers, and that Serizawa was a little older than him but had to retake some classes when he missed school. Other than that, Reigen refused to expound on his relationship with his former classmate, and his twitching fingers and sweaty forehead showed how uncomfortable the interrogation made him.
Honestly… He was acting like a teenager on TV in love.
"Did you like him?" Mob did not want to upset his guardian further, but he had to know."
"I would consider him my friend," Reigen's voice pitched a smidge higher as he circumnavigated the question. "Yes!—A friend."
Was it more than that, then? What was more than that?
"Did you… love him?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" Reigen didn't mean to shout at poor Mob, but he panicked and did. He quickly had to smooth over his prickled distress, leaning back in his chair and clearing his throat.
"I mean, even if I did, it would not matter now," Reigen tried to remedy the hurt and confusion he must have caused. "He died a long time ago."
He did, and that complicated things. Nevertheless, Mob recognized Reigen's actions in himself and understood.
"Oh, he was like Tsubomi-chan."
"Finish your soup," Reigen really did not want to accidentally yell at Mob again (or admit he may be right)."It's going to get cold."
Mob did as Reigen asked without protest, yet despite the compliance, he knew in his heart the truth.
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A/N: Note: Serizawa knows there is something below the shrine unlike Mob because he is dead + psychic, so the seal preventing Mob from sensing it is diminished. (What is below the shrine is to be seen.)
