"Hey, Mob?" Reigen flipped through his calendar marked with days he was supposed to meet clients and birthdays of family members. "Since you're starting junior high school soon, do you want to do something special to celebrate?"
Mob had not thought of that. He looked up from the book in his lap.
"Like what?"
"We can do something simple," Reigen offered. "Like going out to dinner and inviting Mom along, or Teru and Ritsu."
"Hanazawa-kun is going to a different school next year," Mob recollected Teru telling him that he was going to attend Black Vinegar Private School. "I haven't seen Ritsu in a while."
"He came over last week, didn't he?" Reigen smoothed out the cover of the calendar.
"Yes…" Mob confirmed, leaning on his elbow to look out the window towards the graveyard, where Dimple appeared to be chasing a stray evil spirit between the bars of the fence (he saved Mob some trouble, at least). "He didn't stay very long. And he didn't act very happy to see me."
Mob watched Dimple snatch the spirit by the tail end.
"I hope he's alright."
.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.
Ritsu's arm shifted painfully as his schoolbag was ripped off his arm. The high schooler slung it to his friend behind him, who took to dumping it out immediately. All of Ritsu's workbooks and pens clattered to the damp alleyway asphalt, and Ritsu made a point to act like he never cared about them anyway. The high schooler blocking him from scrambling towards his things leaned back a bit from towering over Ritsu.
"Did you find anything?"
The other grinned as he found the change purse: a little monkey with a zipper mouth, stuffed fat with coins for snacks. He tossed it into the air and snatched it back, tucking it into his pocket for safe keeping. He ruffled through Ritsu's hollow bag to see if he missed something interesting and ended up plucking out the spoon from the very bottom.
"Aren't spoons made of silver?"
"Moron," his friend muttered. "It won't be worth anything if it's not with a set."
Ritsu glowered at the space over the high schooler's head. The sun was going down behind the distant building, and when the other high schooler kneeling amongst the contents of Ritsu's school bag held up and twirled the spoon to contemplate if it really was not worth anything, it glittered like a chime hung to blown in the breeze. The flashing light stung Ritsu's eyes, and his festering anger scorched his blood within the innermost parts of himself.
If Mob were here, this little ridiculous stunt would never have happened. If Mob were here, he would never have allowed Ritsu to be pushed in an alleyway to have his bag looted through. If Mob were here, he could just use psychic powers like he did the last time.
If Ritsu had psychic powers, he could take care of himself.
Ritsu scratched his nails and knuckles against the brick wall. The light from the spoon blazed like a half-eclipsed sun, and all Ritsu felt was fire.
It wasn't fair.
He wanted psychic powers too.
A muted crack echoed around the alleyway. Suddenly the high schooler screamed and dropped the spoon, and he cradled his one hand with his other like someone had crushed it and he could hardly bear to put pressure on it. His friend for the moment forgot about keeping Ritsu against the wall and went to him, although he was swearing enough that if Ritsu were any less unshakable he may have flushed.
"How could you have possible broken your hand?" The one high schooler deduced through the yelping and withering that his friend thought his hand was hurt. "You didn't do anything!"
"I said I don't know!"
"If you want to be such a baby, let's just leave," he snapped back. "We got what we wanted."
With some tugging and a lot more swearing, the larger high schooler muscled his injured friend out of the alleyway and out of sight. Ritsu hesitated a moment before slowly inching from the wall, left with the disheveled papers and the fallen spoon somehow bent in the middle.
.
Tome Kurata would insist that she was not nosy.
She was just always in the right place at the right time to hear interesting things she had to know more about. Like when she was walking to meet her friends in their chosen lunch spot and heard two of the lower classmen girls chatting behind her.
"That weird boy from Salt Elementary is in my class," the first half-whispered.
"Who?"
"You know, the one who claimed he was a psychic in elementary school."
That got Tome's attention. Her ears practically twitched.
"Oh, Mob-kun?" the second replied. "I haven't talked to him since third grade. Did he go all the way through school with us?"
"You know, I don't remember…"
They turned off as they reached one of the school trees, debating whether the rumor about Mob making an eraser float was true. And Tome almost broke into a run, rushing up to Inugawa and Kijibayashi and Saruta so quickly they had only a moment to notice her approach.
Tome slammed her bento box down on the bench, "Inugawa!"
Inugawa nearly inhaled a cheese puff. He coughed violently and forced himself to swallow the unchewed and dried bits of cheese puff, his eyes watery and voice cracking.
"Y-Yeah?"
Tome put her arms on the bench like she was posed to leapfrog over it and leaned in close to Inugawa, eyes wicked and bright.
"You went to Salt Elementary School, right?"
Inugawa concluded his fit with a drink of juice. "Yes."
"Do you know someone named Mob?"
Inugawa cocked his head and pinched his chin. "I think so… Why?"
"I just heard the most wonderful thing, Inugawa!" Tome left his personal bubble to do a little twirl. "I heard that dear Mob might be an ESPer! Maybe he can use telepathy!"
"There she goes again," Saruta mumbled to Kijibayashi. "I thought that dream died when her application for a Telepathy Club got turned down again…"
"Saruta! Kijibayashi! Listen!" Tome pointed back and forth between the two. "We'll get it next year! I just know it!"
"Kamuro and Tokugawa are probably running for president and vice president next year, and they don't seem too keen on it either." Kijibayashi shrugged. "Especially Tokugawa."
He shivered thinking about the hard-faced student council member who never smiled. Tome whirled her finger to Inugawa.
"Inugawa, what can you tell me about Mob?"
Saruta and Kijibayashi slumped in disbelief. "She completely ignored us…"
"Well…" Inugawa continued nevertheless. "He was kind of famous in elementary school."
Tome switched places with her plunked bento box, snapping open her food and taking up her chopsticks to prepare for a story. She nudged into Inugawa's personal bubble again.
"Famous, but not popular," Inugawa recalled, Tome consuming every one of his words (and every one of her carrot slices). "He sort of always blended into the background; I never really noticed him. He was known to make things float on their own, and people thought he was some sort of supernatural being sent to play tricks on them because he lives near a graveyard. He also has this weird guardian who shows up to support him during school events."
Tome popped the chopsticks out of her mouth.
"So it's true…" she spoke with one full cheek. "He's an ESPer."
"I really don't know," Inugawa confessed. "I guess you'll have to ask him."
Tome went on the task alone, abandoning her bento (and then going back to finish it as quickly as possible) and trekking around the school with passion burning in her heart. Inugawa could not remember a more detailed description than Mob having a rather round and pale face and a bowlcut, and that caused Tome to mistake one of the school fence posts for him. Not disheartened, she had to wonder where someone seemingly so social awkward would spend his lunch, and that drew her into the school building and first year classrooms.
She just had to find a pale face and a bowlcut, a pale face and a bowlcut, a pale face and a bowlcut, a pale face—
He blended so well into the environment of the classroom that she almost did not notice him upon her first observation. In fact, she bypassed the room altogether, only noticing her mistake halfway down the hallway, and her excitement caused her to rush back and slam open the door and yell into the classroom.
"Mob-kun!"
He moved with such quick skittishness that Tome stood staring for a moment. He jumped from his desk to the wall, even abandoning his food to back away submissively.
"Y-Yes, Senpai?"
How rude of her! Tome did not mean to come off so harshly. She hastily corrected herself by holding her shoulders up and approaching him calmly.
"Apologizes, Mob-kun. I did not mean to startle you."
His composure relaxed some, but not enough. "It's alright…"
"And I have not even introduced myself! How impolite of me!" Tome was really trying to come off as friendly (and maybe overdoing it). "I am Tome Kurata of class 2-1!"
She flourished another twirl. "You can call me Tome-chan!"
Mob finally stepped away from the wall. "Tome-chan?" And, his eyes brightened. "How nice. That was my grandmother's name."
"Then it must be fate!" Tome slipped back to her usual self. "Fate for us to meet like this!"
Mob blinked.
"Let me explain." Tome waved a finger. "You are an ESPer, correct?"
"Well—I." Mob almost curled in on himself again. "Yeah…"
"And I have looked for someone like you all my life!" Tome held open her arms. "You see, I have always had a dream to contact life beyond this world—extraterrestrial beings! And what better way to do that than through telepathy?"
Tome propped up on a desk and swung her legs back and forth.
"Will you help me contact aliens, Mob-kun?"
.
A/N: Me: I don't know if Ritsu really needs psychic powers in this story.
Me at Me: Then you have no reason to hurt him.
