A/N: Sorry for the wait, but finals are coming, so I need to focus on those!
.
Customarily, Mob sat in his little window nook while Reigen did paperwork.
Sometimes he read, sometimes he studied, but often enough that it made Reigen curious Mob stared out the window—and Reigen wondered what he thought about. What he did that day, perhaps? Did he imagine stories? Philosophies? Did he contemplate the universe in ways Reigen (a mere human) could not even begin to imagine?
"It's getting dark outside."
Reigen looked up from scribbling to try to make his dying pen work again. Mumbling slate-grey clouds were coming from the way of the graveyard, with a wind that spoke of late-season bitterness and the unknown.
"It looks like it's going to rain," Reigen concluded. He turned back to his increasingly agitating pen.
Mob remained still. A chill of warning graced his spine, like what one would get when the midnight of Halloween struck on the clock.
"It's as if the very sky is angry."
"You should hurry to meet the groundskeepers, then," Reigen ignored (or did not notice) the foreboding in his words. "And take your raincoat just in case."
Mob perked from whatever cold mood of melancholy he had slipped into. For next spring they wanted to plant chrysanthemums around the shrine, and Reigen's uncle had been kind enough to allow Mob to pick where and what color they would be. Mob wanted to decide before chrysanthemums went out of season for the year.
Mob excused himself and ran to dig his coat and boots out of the hall closet. From his desk, Reigen could see small flashes of Mob's activity beyond the front door, and how he struggled to fit the rain boots on his feet. He would have to buy him new ones for next year.
Reigen was almost startled by how domestic that realization was—but, honestly, he was used to it by now. Mob had been living with him for so long that passing thoughts like buying new boots or remembering to pick up the jelly that Mob liked were common. Any strive to find the parents Mob had been taken from had come up fruitless, so he wondered…
Mob was going to enter middle school soon; he was practically a teenager. Now, that realization was frightening: that Mob had lived with Reigen far longer than he had ever anticipated, and at this point probably until his adult life. When Mob met Reigen, he was so tiny and sweet that it was easy to think that one day his family would come for him, but he hardly heard Mob speak of that anymore. He had accepted the truth of Reigen being his guardian forever before Reigen had even thought of it.
"I'm going now, Shishou." Mob poked his head around the doorway. "I'll wait on the shrine steps until they arrive."
Reigen nodded absently; caught in his revelation, and Mob knowing none of it. He shut the front door with a soft click, and Reigen hesitated numbly even after he left. He eventually sunk in his chair with a sigh, gripping the front of his hair and rubbing his palms across his forehead.
When had Mob lost hope?
.
It did not take long for Teru to get information.
"Mob? Yeah, he lives in a house by a graveyard, can't miss it."
"We had the school Halloween party there once! All he did was talk to someone who wasn't there. It was super creepy!"
"I think his house has a sign that says Spirits and Such Consultation Office on the outside of it?"
Teru had not expected finding out where Mob lived to be quite that easy, but here he was, in front of a house next to a graveyard, and with a sign reading Spirits and Such Consultation Office atop the doorway.
Teru did not take competition lightly… to say the least. And, unfortunately, he saw many things in his life as competition: grades, looks, sports; anything to prove he was better than everyone else. If he took shame, it was personal, and if anyone tried to challenge him, it wasn't pretty.
Like Mob.
Tripping up on the ball was not a coincidence; not a mistake on the part of Teru. When they collided, Teru had felt the spark that shorted out his psychic energy, like the dangling strings of his confident grip had been snipped. He had fallen, and retracted in anger, upset both by his tumble and the one who had so easily caused it.
He was supposed to be the one with psychic powers that made everyone admire him—not some milksop of a boy who threw up his lunch on the soccer field.
Teru was better than that. And he wanted to make sure Mob knew he was, so he entered his house looking for him.
Maybe he should have knocked or rung the doorbell like the sign beside the door told him to, but politeness was not the first thing on his mind. The door opened with no resistance, leading to a front parlor with a closet and umbrella bucket. To the left, it led to the living area, where Teru could see a window and a couch and a doorway outlining the kitchen. To the right, there was only an office, and a man at a desk doing paperwork.
He lifted his head. His eye's met Teru's, and the soft expression in them did not change, but his eyebrow rose, and the side of his mouth with it.
He must have been Mob's guardian.
"Can I help you?"
Alright, Teru would play his game. He entered the office and sat in the chair before the desk, not replying with words, but replying with that. The nameplate before him read Arataka Reigen.
Reigen's face quieted with his approach. He was more watchful now, as if he read Teru, effortlessly, and Teru almost scoffed in his very face. Amusing.
"I'm looking for Mob."
Reigen nodded nonchalantly, like he expected that request. He shuffled the papers on his desk straight, and the ease by which he did and spoke was almost infuriating.
"Are you a classmate of his?"
Teru bit back his temper. For some reason, the man was not going to give Mob over freely like he had anticipated. Teru was going to have to play some cards right. And that included presenting himself as someone who could cause no harm.
"Yes! I wanted to make sure he was okay after he went home sick the other day. I haven't seen him since then, and I wanted to say I was sorry."
If Reigen noted the new sweetness to Teru's persona, he did not show it. Instead, he made a series of odd hand gestures Teru could hardly keep track of, ending them all by making a sideways L with his thumb and forefinger that pointed towards the wall.
"Ah! You're Teruki Hanazawa, then."
Just who was he? No mind, Teru nodded obediently and confirmed.
"Yes, I am."
Reigen tapped a stray paper back into place, a pensive maturity to his face.
"Mob told me about you, and about what you did."
He was not accusatory, at least. A lesser parental body may have blamed him for hurting their poor little muffin, but Reigen seemed pretty understanding. Teru could work with that.
"I'm really sorry," Teru apologized to Reigen, and in general. "I didn't mean for it to happen the way it did."
Reigen just sort of observed. He folded his hands under his chin, and he posed a single question:
"You haven't met others with psychic powers, have you?"
No, that's the part Mob told him?
Cold hesitation sank over Teru. He did not answer, and Reigen did not move, and his gaze soon inflamed the anger Teru had settled in his blood. His bottom jaw clinched painfully, and visibly, and Reigen relaxed from his imperious pose, finally leaning back in his chair to be more colloquial.
"You have probably lived your life as a big fish surrounded by masses of little fish, right?" Reigen asked rhetorically. "Where from an early age you have always found easy ways to better your peers through your psychic powers. You made it so in their eyes, and in your own, you are special: a gifted student, a soccer star—whatever satisfies your need to stand out. When, in reality, you don't have brains or athletic ability. You just have psychic powers. Like Mob does."
The smallest vibration shifted the wooden floor. Teru shot up from his seat, like a great bird flashing its talons.
"I didn't come here to talk to you," Teru spat his words like poison. "I want to talk to Mob."
Reigen cocked his head slightly. His final question was one word long.
"Why?"
The peace shattered, and the sound was like a bullet through glass. Reigen was flung against the wall, and his desk somehow threw itself precariously into the bookcase, and almost caused it to topple. Teru took the place of the desk, looking like how a Roman solider may have looked before spearing the crucified. He lifted his hand, and Reigen's ribs squeezed until he choked.
"What gives you the right to say anything?"
Much like Mob, he had desecrated Teru's blessed pride.
.
Mob pointed left of the set of steps.
"I like the pink ones a little closer."
The groundskeeper shifted the potted chrysanthemums over half a foot. Mob descended the steps, checked the placement, nodded, and ascended the steps to the shelter of the shrine once more.
"That's the last of them, then," the assisting groundskeeper marked his clipboard. "Now we can get your order sorted for next year."
The dark clouds thundered. Mob peered up from under his hood and the roof of the shrine, viewing the threatening clouds as they came in with the cold wind. For one reason or another, he had the impulse to look homeward, where beyond the trees and fence he could just see the edges of its framework. The house was cast with before-the-storm shadow, and Mob could not help but stare at that juxtaposed poetry: where the place he was most loved and warm had times it was darkest and the mood was wrong. He almost did not notice the groundkeeper speaking.
"We'd better get the flowers back in the truck before it starts to rain," he instructed the other, then looked at Mob. "And you'd better get home, kid. You don't want to get caught in the downpour."
He nodded slowly in reply. He watched as they took two pots of chrysanthemums a piece, but his eyes were drawn back home, and he could only stare for a moment.
Maybe it was the coming storm, but something about it did not feel nice.
.
A/N:
I enter the Spirits and Such Consultation Office
Mob: absent
Reigen: noncompliant
Truths: infuriating
I FORCEFULLY PIN REIGEN AGAINST THE WALL.
