A/N: *draws own fanart* Perfect.

If you want to see Tome-chan in her outfit from the last chapter, check out my tumblr ( thejapanesemapletree) under the 'fic: a risk of going through a doorway is that it may be locked shut behind you' tag!

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Mob turned his face towards the steam rising from his ramen bowl.

"Hanazawa-kun?"

Teru stopped mixing his noodles together (he always got impatient and ate everything else first).

"What is it, Mob-kun?"

Mob felt the heat from the steam brush his cheeks.

"How do you… get girls to like you?"

Teru hesitated. Then, he snorted, and he covered his offending mouth.

"Do you like someone, Mob-kun?" he asked, amused, through his hand. "A girl?"

Mob slinked deep into his collar, muttering softly, "Maybe…"

"Poor guy…" Teru sighed, picking up a ball of noodles. "Caught up in the bittersweet taste of love."

He chewed on his noodles thoughtfully, trying to decide what the best answer to give was.

"Well… What does she like? You can try to appeal to her that way."

Mob flushed deeper. He thought of Tsubomi-chan, and how much praise she always gave to the boys who won races or did well in gym class. Because of that, he had not had the courage to speak to her in years.

Mob hardly whispered:

"Muscles…"

.

"Welcome to the Body Improvement Club!"

The captain clasped Mob on the back, and he jolted to attention. The other members eagerly circled around them.

"It's great to have you!"

.

Ritsu looked both ways before crossing the street. He walked to the other side of the road in long strides, and his heartbeat kicked up as he approached the graveyard gate. He had been here so many times now, and yet for the first time the fence posts reminded him of something violent, like cactus spikes or teeth, and the gate a monstrous mouth. He had a fleeting want for Mob to be there with him. But, he knew Mob would not be back from his club activities for a few more minutes, so he had to go alone, entering passed the gate doors appearing like lips ready to chew him open and uncover all the secrets he had inside.

Ritsu clutched his schoolbag close, where under all his papers the two bent spoons resided. He wanted to ask Mob about them, but when Mob would come Ritsu was not sure how he would begin—saying, with proof, that the spoons had to mean something—and that left him frustrated.

Bending spoons could not mean anything but having psychic powers, right?

The uncertainty was what was heavy and frightening. Ritsu tried to shake the feeling by walking towards the shrine. A green scrap of littered balloon hung from one of its ordinate arches, and Ritsu scowled.

No… Not a balloon.

The thing turned, and had a face. Ritsu stared at it for a moment, and it blinked in return. It floated like a dandelion seed on the breeze and dropped an inch down from the arch to examine Ritsu closer.

"Can you see me?"

It spoke! Unprecedented, for sure. Ritsu was too involved in his feeling of shock to decide if it would be wiser to deny if he could, but the thing answered for him, swooping close to Ritsu's face with a grin.

"You can!" the thing confirmed with Ritsu's unmoving gaze. "That's— "

Ritsu reacted, and he swatted the thing away like a bee that had flown too near his face. It fell to the grass without even the satisfaction of a thud, but Ritsu did not care, instead going towards it with an aggressive instinct he did not know he had.

"Wait!" the thing cried, turning away its face as Ritsu raised his foot to stomp on it. "Don't hurt me! I'm a friend of Mob's!"

That possibility at least got Ritsu to pause. The thing zipped up from the ground before Ritsu could change his mind, rubbing the red-spotted cheek Ritsu had hit so hard.

"I'm not just some evil spirit!" it complained and rubbed both cheeks now with arms Ritsu was sure it did not have before. "I help protect the graveyard!"

It tried to flex with its little wisps for arms. Not impressed or convinced, Ritsu's expression hallowed.

"An evil spirit?"

"Not an evil spirit!" It shivered. "I'm Dimple! Mob and I are friends!"

"I doubt Nii-san would allow an evil spirit around the graveyard." Ritsu's darkness did not disperse. "He is pretty protective of this place."

"If I wasn't allowed here, I wouldn't be able to get in, or be exorcised already," Dimple pointed out. Fair, but:

"I did not come here to talk to you," Ritsu snubbed Dimple entirely; he put his bag on the shrine stair and sat down. "I came to talk to Nii-san."

"Ah…" Dimple smirked. "About your psychic powers, right?"

Ritsu's head whipped towards Dimple. He smiled again and floated closer to Ritsu—although, this time, not close enough for him to reach.

"You're so predictable," he sighed and held up his arms. "Every time you come over it's the same thing: Bend this! Float that! Teach me how to do too! You try to pretend that one day you will have something you never can."

Ritsu's hair stood on end. Before he could lash out again, Dimple swung back, arms wide.

"But that has changed!" he cheered. "Somehow, you must have awakened your psychic powers! Seeing me is proof enough of that."

For sure? The reality was almost too much. Ritsu could only freeze in awe, and Dimple laughed.

"You finally got them! Congrats! Now you just need to learn how to control them!"

Dimple pointed at himself, "And I'm just they guy to do it!"

"B-But…" Ritsu's words were croaked, and automatic. "I wanted Nii-san to help me…"

"Come on." Dimple waved his hand. "Has he been able to help you yet? Sometimes, Mob has trouble controlling his own powers, you know."

Although Dimple may have been referring to the time he was beaten, Ritsu was taken back to his own frightening day, when Mob had become the terrible thing that resided within and thrown him through a gravestone. Ritsu's hair rose again, and Dimple took his fearful expression as an opportunity.

"While I have years of experience!" He pointed with both thumbs this time. "If you let me take over your body— "

Ritsu became immediately serious. "Take over my body?"

"Not like that, Ricchan!" Dimple panicked to correct himself. "I mean— "

"Don't call me that."

"Not like that, Ritsu." Dimple tried again. "I mean if you let me enter your body, I can help your psychic powers to awaken further! They have lied dormant until now, so your full potential is probably not reached yet."

Dimple dared to move closer to Ritsu.

"So? What do you say?"

Ever thoughtful, Ritsu forced himself to consider his options.

To awaken his psychic powers! It was all Ritsu had ever dreamed. Of course, when he was young, he thought it was as easy as Mob made it seem, but over the years he learned—painfully—that such talent was not that cheap. It was a born trait, or so it seemed: one that kept Mob just out of Ritsu's reach no matter what he did. Psychic powers were a blessing Mob at times disliked so immensely and Ritsu wanted so desperately that Ritsu sometimes thought he hated the one he had loved enough as a child to call him his older brother, but now…

Ritsu did not have to feel like he was a lesser.

"… Okay." The prickle of need stung the back of Ritsu's tongue as he spoke. "I'll let you teach me."

Dimple smiled like a snake before it swallowed a mouse. He held out his hand to shake, but just as quickly retracted it, dashing with newfound speed to the shadows of the shrine.

"Ritsu!"

Mob waved from the graveyard gate. The spell of fulfilled daydreams and easy choices dropped its veil, and Ritsu found himself blinking against the sunlight. Mob met him at the stair, where Ritsu looked lost in space like Tome sometimes got watching the night sky.

"I hope you did not have to wait too long… Are you okay?"

"Hum?" Ritsu looked up to Mob's face. "Oh, yes."

He took his bag, and stood from the stair. A weird sort of conflict pulled in him, with one half humming claims of betrayal and the other demanding silence. In the end, the latter won out, and Ritsu simple smiled, the intuition to be forgotten like the spoons in his bag.

"Just tired is all. You don't have to worry about me, Nii-san!"

.

The man watched.

He watched as the boy entertained himself by making pop bottles float. He watched as the green little spirit with him exited his body. He did not know why the spirit did not stay—did not know the spirit was too weak to do anything—but it did not matter. What mattered was the boy, and the pattern the man had observed of him coming to the graveyard.

He just had to find the perfect moment to strike.