A/N: have a classic darkfic for almost-halloween! as i said in the summary, this is an ao3 reupload, as all my fics are - if you're interested in my fics, here's a reminder that you can find them all on ao3, and i don't always crosspost my stuff cuz can be inconvenient sometimes. my username there is the same as it is here.
anyway, enjoy! reviews, etc, appreciated!
The corpses moved light, and the water ran clean.
At a point, that was all Keiji Mogami could ask for.
Doesn't the average man want an easy job from home? Doesn't the average man want to bring in the big bucks, sitting on his ass and doing nothing but memorizing names and waggling some fingers?
In that way, with an easy job and a Mom who sees nothing but her little boy, day in and day out, Keiji Mogami lives in a utopia. Someone stupider than him could've relished in that —
— but, Keiji Mogami knew, from a young age, there was no such thing as a utopia. ESP was no flashy, pretty talent — no glimmery special effects, earning no stadium applause. What the audience wanted, he learned, was charisma, showmanship, excitement — something the real deal never gave.
So, into the shadows of those self-proclaimed psychics he went — and into them he would stay.
Street interviews called him a con artist — in no derisive way, either, rather a fact of life. Of course a TV psychic was a liar — and water was wet.
Sometimes, he wanted to give them a real show. Snap the cameras out of their hands, give the vultures something to really cry over.
...alas, Keiji Mogami's days in the limelight had long since passed. Even if he did, it'd amount to nothing more than a feeble burst of headlines — working in death taught him how little value it really held.
After about two months, the victim would be forgotten, and their families would settle into a new normal.
His teeth ground. He'd fought against that new normal — yet, even now, the corpses moved light, and the water ran clean.
The home was silent, and Mom was gone.
He'd been given no reward for his efforts — where would the paychecks go, now? No leaky sink, no creaking, poorly-settled foundation, no food on the table, felt worth anything at all. A wad of cash, collecting dust, in his Mom's old closet — shiny plaques, awards, for his TV spots, that only hanged overhead and mocked him.
That bright-eyed boy was long gone — the one who smiled for the cameras, glittered under the stage-lights, the picture of innocence: synonymous with psychic powers themselves.
A dry husk stood in its place. The rot had settled in deep — mangled roots, opening his veins… the windows through his kitchen were frosted, and the sunrise beyond them dull.
Neighbors didn't visit anymore. Neither did journalists.
His suffering had made him famous — far more than any spiritual parlor tricks could've.
Vultures, pecking his windows, waiting to scavenge his mother's body, squeeze out every saccharine heartbreaker documentary they could — not a hair out of place in her tomb, waiting to be closed.
Whether Hisa Mogami lived or died…
…irrelevant, to them.
Tragedy made for stronger spirits — tragedy made for a stronger stage presence.
Cry. Cry, harder, now. That's the reality they're looking for, safe on their couches, able to distract themselves with drinks, popcorn, able to scoff out of their peripherals: thank God that's not me.
You did it all for her — so when you failed, what did that make you?
What did that make your life — who you were?
You couldn't save her.
So could you, in the least, have been someone she'd be proud of?
That question was never one Keiji Mogami could answer.
He knew — but could never form his lips around the words.
Each time he tried, they morphed into curses — against the doctors, the TV producers, Mom's old coworkers, even her ungrateful spirit.
That was easier. Take your negative emotions and throw them at the world.
Make sure, when they find your body, it's the little girl next door who sees it first — become the ultimate shock-show, curse the name Keiji Mogami out of the mouth of every tabloid, every producer — render it a taboo, take childhood memories and crush them in your hands, render your name synonymous with death, with pus, rot, ooze, with a broken windpipe, with dark bruises, with maggots and the shit crawling down your legs postmortem, with the moth-bitten cobwebs making up whatever's left of your clothes, with the hair, greasy, oiled, falling from their follicles, with the bones splintering, soggy with fat, discolored with decay —
— make it mean something.
Please, God, let it mean something.
Shigeo Kageyama, ten years old, had spent a week picking at his dew-claws — feeling on his tongue-tip, the hardened edges of his canines, and hoping one day to pull them out whole — when he met Keiji Mogami, lingering in a hospital waiting room.
A spirit — Shigeo could sense the man's death-colored aura, but regarded it only with a wide-eyed curiosity. It wasn't every day he met ghosts after all — natural to him as cats in the street, but notable nonetheless. Places like hospitals, nursing homes, all crawled with them, but only a few held shape as clearly as this man had.
He was powerful, Shigeo could guess that much, and his head was dipped low, brooding all cool-like, like a man on the cover of a movie. He had the makings of a spirit — skin pulled a bit too tight over his bones, clothing tattered, like he'd been pulled right out of a coffin — but anyone without Shigeo's sixth sense could've reckoned he was nothing but an unkempt loiterer, hovering by the coffee-table magazines.
Miyako and Nobuhiko Kageyama would talk in hushed tones about their inability to pry a word out of their oldest son — nothing beyond cursory I'm fine, thank you, is Ritsu okay? — and Shigeo would hear more than he was meant to, picking at his nails, noting some factoid his smart little brother had given him once, about declawed cats, about the first knuckle of his finger — and he wouldn't say a thing.
He wasn't the one who'd nearly lost a son, after all.
He wasn't the one hospitalized for a skull splintered open like hard candy — and out came the cherry juices against hot concrete.
…but…
…he had to talk to somebody — and he hardly understood his human classmates, the doctors…
…so he raised his head, voice hoarse.
"Hello, spirit-san."
The man blinked, then peered down at the boy. Dark hair fanned down, eyes shadowed, digging rivets into his skin… yet, his limbs loosened, and there came a fond smile.
"Hello."
Tugging on the straps of his backpack, Shigeo tried to summon the words of advice his mother had given on etiquette, when talking to adults.
"I'm waiting to see my little brother. They're running tests on his head." Idly, he shifted his weight, from foot to foot. "He hurt it — but I don't know what they're testing for. Ritsu is really smart. He has a good head, even though he hurt it."
…okay, that surely wasn't what his mother had intended, but, when one word came out, then tumbled more.
He really hadn't been able to talk about this with anybody — how scary the stark white bandages looked, on his little brother's shaggy head, how he had trouble sleeping some nights, worrying how the surgery would go…
…how he feared the bullies would come back, or worse, their families…
…or, worse…
…
…as if sensing that sour train of thought, the spirit chuckled — and though Shigeo wasn't sure what was so funny, he was thankful for it, in part. He had a raspy chuckle, like the Kageyamas' grandfather.
"Your little brother is lucky to have an attentive Nii-san like you, hm?"
Letting out a little gasp, unable to believe what he was hearing — he was a good Nii-san, after all? — Shigeo nodded.
The man's eyes crinkled at the sight — he was a spirit, but he seemed so alive, too, his crooked smile almost like Shigeo's Mom's.
"I'm here for my mother."
An orange sun, bright even through the overcast, watched a boy toddle after his mentor, past irrigation ditches, gutters — dead leaves from the wake of winter still spotted the pavement, as Shigeo Kageyama skipped through puddles, listening to the satisfying crunches beneath his feet.
Such sensations were long beyond Keiji Mogami — today, the air only chilled his bones, cold as the day he was buried.
The world hadn't beaten Shigeo down yet — but he knew it would, soon.
It always did, and Mogami wasn't particularly interested in deluding the boy…
…especially not on the nature of his powers. Ones he hadn't touched since they burst his brother's head like a grape.
"How's Kageyama Ritsu-kun?" Mogami asked.
With yet another crunch under his feet, Shigeo stopped humming. "He'll go back to school next week. I want to help him with his homework, but I don't know how good I am at it. I don't remember all we studied last year."
Letting out a low chuckle, Mogami exhaled, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat. "Leave school to the ones who are good at it, youngster. Ritsu-kun's plenty capable."
"How's your Mom?"
Overhead, empty trees rattled.
Sometimes, Mogami still felt her gaze on him — hateful as it was the day she'd died.
Would she cry if she saw him, now?
"She keeps an eye on things."
Psychic powers are a trait like any other, youngster. They don't give you anything on their own.
If you want respect, you have to grasp it with your own two hands.
It took me long enough to learn that lesson — I don't want you to learn it late, too.
Your powers don't exist for anyone but yourself. If you hurt someone with your fingers, would you use a knife and chop them off?
You're smarter than you give yourself credit for, youngster. Don't waste your life worrying about people who'd never do the same for you.
With Mogami by his side, Shigeo began to question the role of spirits in his life.
When he was small, he regarded them like bugs: an easily forgettable, yet welcome, fact of life…
…but, all the same, sometimes there were bugs you had to squash. Just as there were hornets over ladybugs, there were evil spirits afoot: ones who used their untimely deaths as excuses to wreak all the havoc they wanted. Spirits who didn't regard humanity in the least — ones who seemed to resent the living beings they shared the world with.
Shigeo didn't want to become a spirit like that.
Still, speaking to one, day in and day out, made him start listening closer: if Mogami, who, on some days, was nothing but a butterfly, or a crow, or a mangy cat, had a voice, then so, too, didn't all the other spirits around? Wouldn't it be cruel to exorcise them, then? What if they had Moms waiting at home, too?
…but… as he was once a human, Mogami was a spirit, too — and, with a hardness behind his eyes, some deep-seated emotion Shigeo couldn't read the room enough to place, he kept a hand level on the boy's shoulders.
Just as there are evil spirits, there are evil humans, Kageyama Shigeo-kun.
Knowing evil when you see it is how you keep a leg up in this world.
I trusted like you, once —
Shigeo could feel Mogami's gaze tracking his fingertips, as he raised a hand up towards the spirit on the ceiling, reduced to little more than an odd shape — human facial features, stretched over an abstract blob.
— and so did this spirit's followers…
…and that's how you die young, or end up brainwashed.
Easily, the spirit burst.
It's justifiable self-defense.
You don't have to apologize for anything.
Where did spirits go after they died?
Shigeo didn't know — but when he wished the little green one well…
…he stopped himself.
It was given two whole lifetimes to change, wasn't it?
Would a third one really have done the trick?
He gazed down at his hands. Spirits didn't bleed, but he knew what he was seeing.
Just the other day, he'd found his brother on the couch in the middle of the night — mumbling about his Nii-san, curled up in a fretful nightmare, bound with his blankets pulled over his head, over a still-scabbing surgery scar.
People couldn't fix themselves that easily.
His hands, no matter how hard he wiped them, would never be dry.
The corpses moved light, and the water ran clean.
If someone stuck him in front of a camera again, Mogami would say his own awakening went something like this.
Life becomes easier, when you begin seeing humans for what they are.
Nothing special — only a step above monkeys, if you really think about it. Sacks of meat with nervous systems, whose cries happened to be a touch more complex than your average ape, with brains just developed enough to think themselves superior.
Animals were humans, and humans were animals.
Spirits were humans, and humans were spirits.
Animals were spirits, and spirits were animals.
It's all mush, sitting in a bowl in your cranium — eyes, nothing but wet shapes, with just the nerves to piece together what numbers, letters, colors, were.
Some would call it a testament to humanity's greatness…
…Mogami, however, knew better.
A human's eyes are no different from an ape's, from a cat's, from an insect's, from a spirit's.
They eat, sleep, fuck, and die — all because certain rhythms, humming deep in their insides, tell them to.
And that's all your family is — all your marriage is — all your friendships are.
Barely a step above a colony of ants, weaving together, prepared to cannibalize their dead the moment it would suit them.
When you realize this, the world goes dull — hollow, as the food you eat and the words you hear lose all meaning. What does it come down to, but the soggy flaps of your vocal cords, of your brain built on eating-sleeping-fucking-dying? What meaning does it hold? Is there any?
…but, at the same time, Mogami found, the world had never seemed brighter.
When meaning is lost — so, too, is consequence.
Swing the bat as hard as you can muster. Take the powers you were given and turn them against the world — give their miniscule rat-brains something to really fear.
Bring all those fuckers down with you.
The blond boy didn't leave Shigeo alone.
He didn't know what the other found so interesting about his powers — but the shaggy-haired boy from Black Vinegar was intent on a fight. Him and his expensive school uniform, expensive phone, grabbing for Shigeo and barking, you think you're better than me with that smug face, huh?!
Faintly, it reminded him of a yappy dog, baring its teeth and trying to act tough, while pissing all over itself — its territory threatened.
Shigeo didn't really get it, but the other didn't like another esper being so close by — especially not one with such a hard, dense ball of energy, right over his shoulder. This was his turf, his school, damn it, did Shigeo think he could just waltz in, like his sorry ugly self was anything without his psychic powers?!
His fists were tight at his side — even when the Black Vinegar boy's rage was enough to lash through a barrier, and carve a thin gash down Shigeo's face.
He's not worth your time, Mogami would say, and Ritsu would say — and even his parents would've persuaded against him provoking bullies, if he knew, simply advising him to run away for the closest adult, but…
…the blood ran clean down Shigeo's lip — and the taste of it made him shiver, made him remember —
— New Year's money and a hospital visit —
— and a brother who Mogami had called a stranger, once —
— and as the boy swore in Shigeo's face, kicking up dirt all over his nice uniform, screaming more nonsense —
— I don't care I don't care it doesn't matter none of this matters what did I ever do to you —
— why do I have to teach you right from wrong overgrown brat isn't my life hard enough —
— white, teal, exploded in his eyes.
With a pulse of Shigeo's hand, there came a rough, uneven tear —
— and there came blood —
— muscle —
— fat —
— bones —
— tendons —
— and a scream, a scream Shigeo Kageyama would've been haunted by, if it were anyone else, but there was nothing good a middle school gang leader kicking at the weak could've brought the world, a cartoonishly cruel caricature who probably would've kept beating him if he hadn't defended himself —
— defended himself, the blood funneling through the boy's gums was to defend himself, the popped pieces of his ribcage were to defend himself, yes, yes, that was what it was, for he'd rather hurt punks and bullies than his own brother, but oh God the dirt was red, now, pulsing fat, but still, the boy writhed, screamed, for he'd known power, but he'd never known it quite like this —
— and all Shigeo could do was stare down, dumbfounded, with all of it still hot on his skin, with the screams still ringing in his ears.
And there, fainter, came another ring.
— it's justifiable self-defense —
Reeling between apologies and insults, half-formed by a tongue ripped clean out of its cavity, by meat splattering where a face had once been, the boy from Black Vinegar scrambled back on the limbs he could still stand to move.
There was enough left to make out a horrified eye — staring right at him.
— it hurts, Nii-san… —
…but what was he to do?
— you don't have to apologize for anything —
It wasn't as if Shigeo could put the boy back together.
He couldn't even put his brother back together.
Skin warm, slick with red, pink, plastering his clothes to his skin, blinking slowly…
…behind the writhing boy from Black Vinegar, there Mogami stood, finding no disgust in Shigeo's form — no terror in his outstretched hand.
Instead, when Shigeo's palm flexed, he smiled, as the boy from Black Vinegar moaned, once —
— another apology, another insult, Shigeo didn't know, for there was no tongue, nor teeth, left to say such a thing —
— before there was another explosion of white, teal, and he was no more.
Down came the rain.
It wouldn't wash the stains from Shigeo's skin, even if it tried.
He craned his head up, pretending, for a moment, they were tears — that he could cry over what he'd done, like any good little boy. Like Ritsu surely would.
…but, none came. They splattered, cold, on his cheeks, down his bangs.
In some places, the blood hardened against his skin, coagulating, cracking, mush against the raindrops.
In others, they ran clean.
Mogami said nothing, the rain passing through his form easily. If he felt the chill, he showed no sign of it.
As police sirens came, as civilians screamed — some children, some in the Black Vinegar uniforms — Shigeo felt a stiff hand close around his shoulder.
It's done.
You've finally changed.
You'll never go back to how you were before.
Teruki Hanazawa, the boy's name was.
His parents, a pair of rich business-types, who Mogami said probably didn't care about their son until they found him in pieces, wanted to have Shigeo put to death.
Make him feel a fraction of what he'd done to Teruki, for this was no goddamn accident, it was an omen. If the boy wasn't stopped here, they'd bet they could hear his name on the news again, next few years.
A psychic killer, punishing the cancers of society. What a story.
Shigeo's parents cried, too. Of course they did — anyone would've.
A part of him, laying dormant, wanted so badly to be able to read the atmosphere, just this once — share in their tears, too, prove he wasn't broken beyond rehabilitation, join them in wondering where it all went wrong, take their hands and promise to be better.
But animals were humans, and humans were animals, so Mogami had said — and so he saw, in their tears, nothing but barren zoo animals, lamenting their severed family tree.
It would all be okay. None of this mattered, did it?
One day, Shigeo would be a spirit, too — perhaps that was all that was waiting for him, anymore.
Faraway, he caught Ritsu's eyes.
He caught self-blame, in the boy's chest. Even when he couldn't read the room, he knew his brother all too well.
There, Ritsu blinked, eyes wet, then pulled back, touching a hand to his temple.
Had his blood been Shigeo's first taste of it?
Had he tipped that first domino, four years ago, when his head burst against the concrete?
…
Shigeo remembered a hospital waiting room.
You did it all for her — so when you failed, what did that make you?
What did that make your life — who you were?
You couldn't save her.
So could you, in the least, have been someone she'd be proud of?
A boy and an evil spirit, side by side in a waiting room.
I'm here to see my Nii-san.
That's funny. I'm here for my son.
"Oh — Ritsu, Ritsu, look!"
There, near an irrigation ditch, Shigeo Kageyama crouches, and his little brother toddles after him, clutching his raincoat close.
Shigeo sticks out a small, chubby finger.
"Do you see her?"
Ritsu blinks, squints, then lets out a high-pitched, prepubescent gasp.
"Kitty!" He cries out, boots slipping against the asphalt as he hops over the gutter into the bushes.
A white cat startles at the sound, then darts away, dead leaves crunching under its light paws.
Ritsu grasps for its tailtip, and nearly falls on his face in the process.
Shigeo laughs.
Down the irrigation ditch, the water runs clean.