Chapter Text
Another Saturday, and another long slow day spent at cram school in a haze caused by sleepiness, and by indoor heating turned up just high enough to make all of them even sleepier, and by the rhythmic squeaking of marker pens on the whiteboard as kanji multiply stroke by steady orderly stroke at the front of the classroom but in scratchy, stop-start motion in Mob’s own workbook. The classroom is filled with the smell of nabe broth from the restaurant downstairs and with a cloud of fragranced deodorant so thick it’s nearly visible, rising up from a roomful of fifteen-year-olds gathered together in their own clothes, no uniforms in sight – weekend cram school is the social event of the week, really.
Some time after lunch, Mob’s phone hums inside his jacket. When at last his last lesson ends, he checks it: Ritsu has been called out for work by Reigen.
They’re supposed to go Christmas shopping together this afternoon, but Mob trusts Reigen not to keep Ritsu too long, and trusts Ritsu not to let himself be kept. He trudges home in the cold, lowering his scarf from over his mouth every now and then to watch his own breath moving like a ghost, like his spirit coming out of his body; like astral projection, without the giddy lurch of vertigo and the inconvenience of his now-empty body collapsing to the ground. At home he makes himself a mug of instant hot chocolate and adds as much genuine milk as he likes and lounges around, feeling warm, feeling contented, feeling warmer and more contented every time he sips his drink and thinks appreciatively of the fact he has no school again now for a day and a half.
And then Ritsu’s home too, rattling his keys in the door and stamping his shoes on the front step as though the front step has hurt him and he wants to hurt it back; he’s pink from cold and scowling to himself about it – scowling to himself about something, anyway.
Mob offers him the remaining half of his hot chocolate: Ritsu’s temper is promptly soothed. By the time they set back out for their Christmas shopping trip, the pair of them are more or less equally sedate.
“Was it nice at work today?” Mob asks.
“Very nice,” Ritsu says, stomping along. “Haunted post office. The spirit was throwing packages around in the sorting room so all the staff were scared, but it was just a former dodgeball player; he just wanted to play. He was just confused.”
“Lots of ghosts are confused,” Mob agrees. “Dying must be confusing, I think... Is he okay now?”
“Said he was going on to the great dodgeball court in the sky,” Ritsu says, and adds bleakly, “If the afterlife is just one great big dodgeball court then I hope I live forever.”
“We could just sit out,” Mob assures him. “We could sit out on the side together and watch everyone else play, that’d be okay. Or we could find another sport to do. Not soccer. We could go jogging. Weight training. Even if you’re dead it’s good to have muscles.”
Ritsu, stomping along, looks at him sideways. “You’d want to stay with me if we got stuck in an afterlife?”
“You’re my brother,” Mob says, surprised. “You’d be lonely. I’d be lonely.”
Ritsu says nothing, but his stomping becomes less ferocious as they continue on down the chilly residential streets; probably he’s relieved to know he wouldn’t be left alone on the eternal dodgeball court in the sky. “Teru-san was there today, too,” he says after a while. “Reigen-san called both of us out.”
“Oh,” Mob says with interest. “How was—”
“He kept asking me about your love life,” Ritsu says, except he says the words love life with a strong and forceful emphasis which overrides all interruptions. “And Reigen-san asked me something very similar. Both of them seemed to have a lot of ideas about your love life lately, nii-san.”
“Ah – well, um... What did you say?”
“I said,” says Ritsu, with that same strong and forceful emphasis, “that I value my brother’s privacy, and that I know my brother values people who value his privacy too, and then they both got embarrassed and stopped talking about it. Nii-san, why were they both talking about your love life?”
“Oh – well, I asked them,” Mob says, explaining. “About you. I wanted to know what they thought.”
“What?” says Ritsu, in a small high little voice. “What?”
“I asked other people, too,” Mob says quickly, reassuringly, in case Ritsu’s worried that Mob might have limited his investigations to such a narrow sample pool, “I didn’t just – it wasn’t only them. I know different people think different things, so... I wanted to see. To find out. Everyone has different opinions about things, it wasn’t... Not just Shishou and Hanazawa-kun.”
Ritsu’s stopped at the edge of the road, unmoving. He’s staring at Mob. He stares at Mob a lot of the time, but this stare is different from the usual one; it’s not a stare like he’s seen a ghost, because Ritsu sees ghosts all the time and mostly ignores them or exorcises them or tells them to go away; it’s a stare more like Ritsu is the ghost – colourless and shaky and as if he’s reached the level of desperate confusion which can be reached only by dying and not realising it, or not understanding it.
“What?” he says to Mob again, in an even smaller voice.
“It’s okay,” Mob says – is it okay? All of a sudden he’s not sure that’s true: he’s worried by the sight of Ritsu’s own worry. He touches Ritsu’s arm, and his hand stops where Ritsu’s arm starts, so Ritsu isn’t a ghost – he’s alive and solid and only terrified, or panicking, or both: Mob isn’t any less worried about him to have confirmed he’s not a ghost. “Ritsu, it’s okay,” he tells him again, earnestly, trying hard to sound comforting. “It’s okay. Are you okay? Are you shivering? Are you cold? We can go inside, we don’t have to go shopping now, we can—”
Mob takes a step away but Ritsu doesn’t follow. Ritsu isn’t going anywhere.
Mob comes back. He puts his hand on Ritsu’s arm again, and Ritsu looks down at Mob’s hand on his arm with the same shocked staring unchanging alarm.
“Ritsu,” Mob says to him, speaking kindly. “We’ll go inside. Come on,” he says, and takes Ritsu’s elbow to encourage him, to tug him gently forwards, step by step. Ritsu trips over his feet and comes with him.
The next warm and private place they come to is a narrow self-service launderette: no staff, no customers. Washing machines stand in a line down one wall and a long bench for sitting and waiting runs along the other wall. At the furthest end are two dryers, one above the other: one of them is churning a pile of white towels around and around inside it, and a warm clean smell fills the room.
Mob sits Ritsu down on the bench. Then he hurries back outside to find the nearest vending machine and hurries back inside again, and presses a can of hot chocolate into Ritsu’s hand.
“It wasn’t just those two,” Mob says to him, seriously, sitting down beside him on the bench. “I asked lots of people.”
“About me,” Ritsu says. He’s staring at the dryer as it goes around and around. “About me.”
“I didn’t say it was about you,” Mob says. “I know I can’t say that. I didn’t say who it was. I just asked... in general. About the situation. The general situation.”
“I’m sure that helped,” Ritsu says gloomily. “I’m sure no one guessed what kind of general situation you really meant.”
“I don’t think so,” Mob agrees. “I don’t think that’s something people usually guess... And I wouldn’t have guessed,” he goes on, being sensible. “If you hadn’t told me I’d never have guessed. And I see you most. I know you best. So – I don’t think anyone else would guess, if I couldn’t...”
Ritsu shakes his head without speaking; but a moment later he looks down at the can of hot chocolate in his hands and seems surprised to see it there, as though he’s not sure how or when it arrived, and he opens it to drink.
“Except Dimple,” Mob adds, remembering. “He guessed. I said it wasn’t you, but he said it was. He said—Ritsu!” he says, startled, and twists around to clap Ritsu hard on the back until Ritsu’s finished choking.
“He knew,” Ritsu manages, when he can speak again. “Dimple knew – he already knew, ages ago. He guessed. I suppose it’s easy to be good at guessing when you can go anywhere and do anything and be invisible and spy on people all the time. He probably read my diary.”
“You write about me in your diary?” Mob says, intrigued.
“No,” says Ritsu, and immediately takes a long sip of hot chocolate which, this time, he doesn’t choke on: already his condition is improving.
“I didn’t say it was you,” Mob says, picking up the point again from where he left it. “I didn’t want anyone to know. I don’t want them to, it’s not... Ah, it’s not—”
“—normal,” supplies Ritsu, “natural, healthy, appropriate, acceptable—”
“—their business,” Mob says. “It’s none of their business. It’s private. But – it’s difficult, sometimes... Thinking about things. Understanding things. So I wanted to know what other people thought.”
“You were doing your research,” Ritsu says.
“Yes!” Mob says. “Yes – yes, it was research. To help me understand. I wanted to understand.”
“Doing your incest research,” Ritsu says, gazing with melancholic focus at the towels in the dryer still churning around and around and around.
“Don’t say that,” Mob says at once, reprovingly. “That’s not nice. Don’t call it that.”
“It is, though,” Ritsu says. “What else is it? We’re brothers. That’s about as incest as it gets. Maximum incest.”
“But it sounds bad,” Mob says. “That’s bad. This isn’t bad. You’re not bad. You’re just – Ritsu.”
“It’s not not incest just because I’m Ritsu,” says Ritsu. “The fact I’m Ritsu is why it’s incest, so actually that’s even less—”
“Ritsu,” says Mob.
“I’m just being accurate,” says Ritsu.
“It’s more important to be nice,” says Mob. “Be nice... to yourself.”
Ritsu doesn’t have anything to say about that, but he looks away at last from the towels in the dryer, and then he sighs. After he’s finished sighing, he slouches back against the wall: he must have sighed out some of his tension, which until now was holding him as stiffly straight as though he had extra-strength superglue on all the joints between his bones.
The bell above the door jangles: someone else comes in, carrying a big white laundry basket under her arm. Mob and Ritsu watch in silence as the new arrival selects a washing machine, and then casts an uneasy look back over her shoulder which Ritsu manages to dodge but which Mob is too slow to evade – he meets the stranger’s eyes for a long awkward moment, then looks away hurriedly too and stares at the wall until he hears the sound of laundry rumbling into motion.
The new arrival puts her empty basket on top of her washing machine. In the reflection of another dryer Mob can see she’s watching both of them again. No one’s talking. Eventually she leaves: they’re alone again, and the coin laundry is quiet again, apart from the noise of washing and drying in progress.
“Are you okay?” Mob says to Ritsu, who’s sitting more calmly now, limply relaxed like someone tired out after crying.
“I don’t know,” Ritsu says, and heaves another great big sigh which leaves him slouching even more after he’s finished with it than before. “Yes. I suppose. I don’t know. I just feel stupid. It’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing...?”
“Because – it feels so big. To me... it feels so big,” Ritsu says, speaking with a familiar slow jerkiness, familiar stop-start uncertainty: he’s speaking the way Mob thinks. “It feels huge. Awful. The worst thing ever. I told you the worst thing I could ever tell you.” He’s shut his eyes tight, Mob sees, leaning forward to study his face. “But you’re being – nice. You’re being serious about it. Like it’s, like it’s normal. Like it’s just... okay. Like if I started doing a new sport and you went off and learned the rules so you could be nice to me about it.”
“I would,” Mob says. “If you did start a new sport, I mean. I would learn about it.”
“I know,” Ritsu says. “I know. You just want to understand... I feel stupid,” he says abruptly, in a very small voice. “It’s so messed up you can’t even understand it without going and asking half the city to help explain it to you. And you still can’t understand it. And you still won’t tell me to get over it. You keep talking about it. And – asking me all these questions, always wanting to know... Just forget it. I wish you’d forget it.” He leans forward to put his empty can down on the floor but then he doesn’t straighten up; instead he folds his arms on his knees and hides his face in them, and doesn’t say anything else.
“I upset you...?” Mob says in dismay. “I didn’t mean to. I just thought... I would have stopped, if I knew. But I just wanted to understand. I always want to understand, if it’s you.”
“You can’t understand,” Ritsu says into his folded arms, hot with frustration. “That’s what I keep telling you, I told you that to begin with, nii-san, you can’t. You won’t. You’ll never—”
“Then why did you tell me?” Mob says. Ritsu doesn’t say anything, and Mob puts his hand tentatively on the black back of Ritsu’s coat. “If you think I can’t understand it. If you don’t want me to try and understand it. Why did you want to tell me about it in the first place?”
Ritsu’s quiet, and while he’s being quiet the dryer comes slowly to a halt. The towels inside it all flop down together with a soft heavy sound to the bottom of the drum.
“Because – I thought you’d say no,” Ritsu says eventually. “I knew you’d say no. I mean, maybe – maybe it’d have been nice, if... If you didn’t. Maybe I thought about that. Not seriously, but... But I knew you were going to say no,” he says again, more strongly. “And I knew you’d be really grossed out by me and then it’d be okay, after that, because you’d know, and... So that’d be okay. You should be grossed out. I knew it wasn’t fair to keep being your brother and you not knowing and not being grossed out. That was like, like – fraud. Like lying to you. You were only nice to me because you didn’t know about it. So I thought I’d tell you – and then you’d know about it, and you’d be grossed out, and it’d be fair again. But now – now...”
“Ritsu—”
“Now you just keep asking all these questions,” Ritsu goes on despairingly, picking up speed, “and I know you’re going to say no, or even if you keep putting it off and not actually saying it yet you’re still going to be thinking it anyway. But you’re not being disgusted. But you should be. And it’s hopeless – I know it’s hopeless, I know you’re being nice, but – you keep asking questions, so – I keep getting hopeful. And that’s disgusting, too. And I hate that, too. I wish I wouldn’t. I wish I wasn’t. I wish you had a nice brother.”
“I do,” Mob says. “I have a very nice brother. I have—”
“What you should do,” Ritsu says to him with sudden alertness, sitting up, “what you should do, nii-san, is just tell me you hate me. Don’t ever speak to me again. Tell Mum and Dad about it and get me sent to hospital forever and refuse to see me again.”
“That’s what you want?” Mob says, doubtfully.
“No,” Ritsu says. “It’s what I deserve. Don’t be so nice to me all the time.”
“It’s not on purpose,” Mob says apologetically. “I mean, I can’t help it. You’re Ritsu, so – I don’t know what else to be.”
“I knew you were going to say no,” Ritsu says, with much less energy this time around; he’s addressing the washing machine directly across from him with dejected conviction. “I knew you were going to tell me I was sick in the head. I knew that was going to happen. I was ready for it, I was—I knew it would happen. I imagined it. I thought all about it. That’s what should have happened. But you didn’t, so – now I’m just... I don’t know. It’s not what I thought. It isn’t anything. You’re being too nice. I feel stupid,” he says again, “I don’t get it, I don’t like it, I feel stupid, I don’t know,” he says at last with passion, and falls miserably quiet just as the door jangles again, and another customer comes in.
This one casts them both a wary glance too, heading for the dryer to collect his pile of clean towels, and Mob keeps his hand reassuringly on Ritsu’s back and keeps his stare fixed without expression on the stranger from the moment he comes in to the moment he leaves – it doesn’t matter if he’s unnerved by Mob’s attention; it only matters that he hurries up and goes, and leaves them privately alone again.
The washing machine sloshes and squelches quietly against the wall. Mob pats Ritsu’s back some more, wondering.
“You have a lot of feelings,” he says at last: respectful, trying to commiserate.
“Don’t you?” Ritsu says, not entirely nicely.
“Yes,” Mob says, mild and unoffended. “Yes, I do. Usually. It’s just – different, I think... It’s difficult. I have to think about them first. Ah – like maths,” he says, sitting upright as inspiration strikes. “You always get it, Ritsu. You know all about it, you understand and you do your homework and it’s always good. And that’s good. But – I don’t get it... And I forget things, and – I don’t know where the numbers go. Or why I’m doing it. And then I’ve left my book at school, so I don’t know what the homework was, anyway, so... It doesn’t make sense. So I ask you. Because I know you get it.” He falls quiet again, concentrating, trying to piece together the pieces he’s left out. “So – it’s like that, I think,” Mob concludes. “Feelings, and maths... It takes me longer. It’s better if I can ask other people.”
Ritsu nods, then nods some more. “I know you have feelings,” he says after a moment. “That was rude. I’m really sorry.”
Mob pats him on the back again, and then he moves his hand to Ritsu’s shoulder and pulls gently, coaxing him to put his head down on Mob’s own shoulder: which Ritsu does, shifting on the bench to make himself comfortable. “I don’t think you’re disgusting,” Mob says to him. “That’s the part I don’t like – you thinking that. Thinking I’d think that. That’s much worse than the other things.”
“I think I’m disgusting,” Ritsu says glumly.
“I don’t like you thinking that, either... Maybe you should do some research, too. No one told me they think you’re disgusting.”
“You didn’t tell them it was me, though.”
“No, but – if I had. Even if I had. They’d all probably have said you weren’t disgusting. Inukawa-kun said you’re perfect.”
“You discussed me with your classmates?!”
“Only Inukawa-kun. He has a sister,” Mob explains, reassuringly. “So he understands about siblings... Ah, and Reigen-shishou said maybe we were star-crossed. And – something about milk... I don’t really remember now. But it was nice. It gave me a strong feeling.” The hand which isn’t holding Ritsu’s shoulder he puts briefly to his own chest: there, in his heart – that’s where the strong feeling had been. “Dad thought I was breaking hearts. I said no. I don’t want to break hearts. I’d never do that. Ritsu,” abruptly deadly serious, “I’d never—”
“You talked to Dad?” Ritsu says weakly.
“I didn’t say it was you,” Mob reassures him. “He was happy someone confessed to me. He said congratulations. He doesn’t think you’re disgusting.”
“He doesn’t know it’s me!”
“But he wouldn’t think it anyway,” Mob says comfortably. “He loves you. Mum loves you. I love you. No one thinks you’re disgusting. Dimple said we’re going to be brothers forever and ever, and I thought – it was nice. That’s nice. I’m glad about that. We are.”
Ritsu’s quiet, which is a good sign, Mob thinks, considering that almost everything he’s said in the very recent past has been miserable – maybe he’s run out of miserable things to say; maybe he’s calming down. Against his side Mob can feel his breathing slowing down, too, getting steadier; he feels Ritsu give another great big sigh again, and afterwards he feels Ritsu’s weight relax against him more heavily than before.
“We have all our Christmas shopping left to do,” Mob says to him, eventually; he feels Ritsu move his head to nod. “What did you want to get?”
Quiet. A deep breath. More or less evenly, Ritsu begins, “I thought – a hat. For Dad. I thought maybe we could give a joint present, you could get him gloves, or something. A scarf. Or—”
At the back of the room, a doorway opens in the narrow gap beside the dryers.
“You boys’ve been sitting here for a while now, haven’t you?” remarks a man who must be the owner, studying them with the kind of friendly focus that suggests he’s making sure he’ll be able to describe them to the police later, if necessary. A staircase at his back leads dimly up to the rooms above the launderette. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, thank y—”
At Mob’s side, Ritsu jolts sharply upright again. “It’s not illegal,” he blurts, “it’s not against the law, we weren’t doing anything, we were just sitting, that’s not—”
“Got anything to wash?” says the owner. “Anything to dry? Maybe you’re waiting for your mum, are you?”
“No – no, sorry, we’re not. Thank you,” Mob says all in a rush, getting to his feet. “It was cold outside, so—We’re sorry. We’ll go, we’ll – Ritsu,” he whispers, and pulls him to his feet as well, and they hurry together out into the sudden cold of the late afternoon again.
“I thought he was going to arrest me,” Ritsu says in a shellshocked whisper, once they’ve put some space between themselves and the launderette. “For – indecency. Indecent thoughts. Indecent conversations. I thought I was going to prison.”
“I wouldn’t let you go,” Mob says confidently. “I’d say no. Then you’d have to stay. Where’s good to buy a hat?”
-
That evening, home again and warm again, Mob sits down bravely to face his homework and instead finds himself deep in thought, in much the same way as a careless rambler might put a foot wrong and instead find themselves deep at the bottom of an abandoned well. The well of Mob’s thoughts tonight is so very deep that there’s nothing much to be done about it once it’s happened except get comfortable and wait to find out what he’ll think about next. His exercise book is on the living room table in front of him, but his thoughts aren’t at the living room table: his thoughts are at the bottom of the well, and his homework isn’t down there with him – there’s no chance that what he thinks about next will be homework.
At length, Mob says, “Can you be... too nice?”
“Can I be too nice?” his mother says, looking up from her jigsaw puzzle spread across the coffee table.
“Ah – no, not you,” Mob says. “I mean – people. Just... general people. If you can be too loud, or... too careful, or too confident, or... Can you be too nice?”
“Spoken like a boy concentrating very hard on his homework,” observes his mother, and hurriedly Mob lifts his pen and frowns down at his exercise book, in an attempt to assume the pose of a boy who’s been concentrating very hard indeed on his homework. He risks a glance up to check that it’s working: his mother moves her eyebrows at him in a way which tells him that it isn’t. “Has someone been telling you that you’re too nice, Shige-chan? Because you’re not: you’re just nice enough. You’re a very nice boy.”
“Is that bad?” Mob says.
“Of course it isn’t,” says his mother.
“...Could that be bad?”
“Of course it couldn’t,” says his mother.
Mob’s still frowning down at his exercise book, although now with the effort of thought rather than the pretence of it. “What if... someone told you to be less nice? And more, um – not nice? More... unkind? If you’re too kind, and – you should be unkind. Instead of being kind.”
“Why would anyone say something like that?” says his mother, taken aback and then a little bit revolted, the same way she’d be if she’d reached into a carton of perfectly nice-looking grapes and found that all the grapes hidden at the bottom were secretly rotten. “You shouldn’t listen to anyone who talks like that, Shigeo. That’s the kind of thing that says a lot more about the person saying it than it does about the person they’re saying it to. Really, what kind of person tells someone else to be less kind?”
“Um,” says Mob to his homework. “I, um. I don’t know. I think... maybe he was upset.”
“And no wonder, if he thinks like that,” his mother says mercilessly.
Ritsu is safely out of the way upstairs, taking his turn in the bath and unable to listen in and be mortified: Mob, mortified on Ritsu’s behalf, turns his face down hastily to his homework again. All research involves questions better left unasked. It’s just hard to know which ones those questions are going to be until you’ve already asked them, and found yourself regretting them.
-
There’s a list on the classroom wall, and the name beside today’s date says Kageyama: it’s Mob’s turn to spend the lunch break discussing his high school prospects instead of eating lunch. In practice, Mob’s teacher does all the discussing, and Mob himself sits very straight and grips his knees and nods a lot, and says Yes a lot, and sometimes also says Okay, and occasionally says No, and when the time doesn’t seem ripe to say any of those things then he makes attentive conversational noises instead, in order to prove that he’s listening, and not slipping off sideways into daydreams.
What progress has he made? What research has he done? What essential high school considerations has he taken into account? Does he really still intend to declare four years of part-time work experience as the apprentice of a professional psychic, and is there nothing his teacher can say to talk him out of this? This is the most important decision of Mob’s life so far, and he mustn’t take it lightly, and if he had his little brother’s grades then matters would be different but he doesn’t, and unless he wants a nasty shock come results day then he really ought to be studying far more than he is currently – and here are pamphlets, here are flyers; here are leaflets filled with advisory information, here’s a selection of prospectuses, and here’s the schedule for yet another upcoming schools fair...
“How was it?” says Inukawa, when Mob comes staggering back into the classroom under the weight of his armful of papers. “Invigorating? Inspiring? You hyped for exams yet?”
“Hyped...?” Mob says, a dazed echo. He drops his pile of paperwork down onto his desk and drops himself down into his chair. On the glossy cover of the high school prospectus on top of the pile, a girl on a bicycle is smiling confidently into the distance as her red scarf and dark, loose hair stream out behind her in the breeze, with two of her friends walking and laughing alongside her – but her bright scarf and loose hair are already in violation of the uniform code: not even a photograph can be trusted to accurately show Mob what the future holds. “I don’t know,” Mob says. “I don’t know... You have to think about so many things,” he says mournfully to Inukawa, who plucks a mini cocktail sausage from his lunchbox and nods, as he eats it, with an attitude of grim sympathy. “Where, and why, and if they want you... And you have to study. I don’t have enough time. I can’t think that fast.”
“Tick, tock,” Inukawa says heartlessly. “Well, worst comes to worst, Mob-kun, you and me’ll just give up on high school and go and live in the woods, and you can get us food with your powers.”
“How?” says Mob.
“Dunno,” says Inukawa. “Grow stuff, I guess. Turn bits of old wood into hamburgers. If it rains, you can turn it into orange juice; that way we’d still have a healthy balanced diet.”
There’s a bottle of water on Inukawa’s desk. Mob looks at it and thinks hard about it being orange juice instead now, and not water; but it remains water, and it doesn’t give him any encouraging tickles of psychic cooperation to suggest that it might be willing to stop being water if he only treats it right. “I don’t think I can do any of that,” Mob says regretfully.
Inukawa finishes off the last of the mini cocktail sausages in his lunchbox, and heaves a tremendous sigh. “Then we’d both better get into high school, hadn’t we?”
They both better had.
Habit takes Mob’s footsteps down towards the clubroom once the school day ends – but he’s approaching the final term of his third year and he isn’t supposed to be attending club practice four afternoons a week anymore; he’s supposed to be working hard and devoting all his time to being diligently studious instead, to make sure he gets into high school and doesn’t have to go and live in the woods with Inukawa, surviving day to day by turning bits of old wood into hamburgers. Reluctantly, dutifully, Mob turns away; reluctantly he trudges off to retrieve his outdoor shoes, and he sets off for home instead.
The afternoon is cold and grey and already beginning to lose its light. Sometimes this weather makes everything else seem worse, colder and greyer and darker than it really is, but sometimes this weather makes everything else seem better just by the power of contrast: nothing can be as cold and grey and lightless as the day itself. It depends on the situation, Mob thinks wisely, and enjoys the feeling of his own wisdom all the rest of the way back home – it’s too bad that high school entrance exams test on things like maths and not on things like wisdom, or telekinesis, or doing pull-ups.
Other things depend on the situation, too. Being nice depends on the situation: whether your niceness is too nice, or not nice enough, or just the right amount of nice.
The afternoon becomes the evening. One after the other, Ritsu and their father and their mother come home. Dinnertime comes and goes; Mob’s downstairs again, alone in the kitchen, staring vaguely at the kettle as he waits for it to boil. Ritsu thinks he’s been too nice. Their mother thinks it’s not possible to be too nice. Mob doesn’t think it’s possible to be too nice either, particularly not to Ritsu – but Ritsu was dismayed enough to learn about Mob’s research that Mob’s research no longer seems as though it was nice, no matter that all of it was done from love and only ever meant in kindness. Nothing which upsets Ritsu is something that’s kind to Ritsu.
The kettle boils. Mob makes his tea and takes it back upstairs, where his homework is expecting him, but Mob’s ability to pay attention to his homework also depends on the situation. Currently, his ability to pay attention to his homework is impaired to the point of non-existence: thinking about Ritsu is much more interesting than thinking about maths.
Research on Ritsu without Ritsu upset Ritsu: that kind of research isn’t good anymore. But research itself is good; research is important, because you have to learn about things you don’t understand, or else you won’t do well in class and won’t pass your exams and won’t get into any high schools and won’t get a good job and won’t be able to earn any money and will turn to crime and be arrested and go to prison, and then you’ll become the real-life horror story your former middle school teacher uses to scare their latest batch of third-year students into studying as hard as they can...
Mob’s homework book is tugging at his attention with new urgency. Optimistically he turns the page, just in case something better is waiting for him on the other side: on the other side is even more maths. He sighs, and turns back again in resignation.
His research upset Ritsu, but research is important; the glossy stack of high school prospectuses on the floorboards beside Mob’s desk proves that. Research is important because you shouldn’t make a big choice without finding out as much relevant information beforehand as you can.
But you shouldn’t rely on just one method of research to get that information, either: you should broaden your scope. It’s okay if you start out by leafing through school prospectuses, looking at the pictures of nice green grass and nice red running tracks and nice smiling students, glazing over every time you try to read any of the accompanying text, but after that you should also make campus visits and speak to current students and weigh up the minimum exam grades the school is willing to consider in its applicants, and find out about all the small details relevant to your own particular interests: facilities for body improvement, for instance, or the support of school faculty for the pursuit of telepathic development.
And if it turns out that some kinds of research don’t work so well – if they confuse you, or don’t tell you what you need to know, or upset someone you care about – then you should try different kinds of research instead, and maybe those different kinds of research will bring you different information too. It’s important to find things out in as many ways as you can.
The footsteps passing by his open bedroom door stop, then double back. “Nii-san?”
“Yes,” Mob agrees.
“What are you doing?”
“Studying.”
“Really?” says Ritsu’s sceptical voice from the doorway.
“Mm. Sort of. Mostly,” Mob says, raising his head from his folded arms and rubbing at his cheek, which feels like it has the fabric of his pyjama sleeve printed onto it. “I thought – if I keep looking at it, I’ll probably remember it. Like a photo.”
“Is it working?” Ritsu asks.
Mob shuts his eyes to test it. Across the darkness, a triumphant parade of mathematical figures fails to march. “No,” he reports after a moment. “Well – not yet. Maybe if I look at it a bit longer, then...”
Ritsu’s already on his way in, the shuffle of his slippers businesslike on Mob’s floorboards as he comes to see what Mob’s seeing. “I know how to do this,” he announces, touching the page. “Shall I help you?”
“Oh – no, it’s okay. I’ll ask Reigen-shishou when—”
“I’ll help you,” Ritsu says immediately; he hurries from the room and reappears towing his own wheeled desk chair behind him, and tugs it through the doorway and pulls it rattling across to Mob’s side. “There’s no need to ask Reigen-san. And I bet I understand it better than he would, anyway... And look,” Ritsu begins, trying to pull his chair in nearer, but his knees bump into the drawers down the side of the desk instead; hastily he rearranges himself and touches the page again, “look, nii-san, you’ve got this part right, haven’t you?”
Mob peers bemusedly at the place below Ritsu’s finger. “Have I...?”
“Yes,” Ritsu says firmly. “Mostly. So – can I borrow your pencil? – so, look, if you move this part here, then—”
Then something or other, probably – but Mob’s spent almost two hours already this evening looking at his maths book and thinking about maths, trying hard to make himself keep thinking about maths, occasionally bravely picking up his pencil and attempting to really truly do some maths, and by now he’s just about at the limit of how much maths he’s capable of experiencing. He tries to listen anyway, though; he tries to understand, alternately frowning down at his maths book and then at Ritsu himself, looking intently at Mob’s maths book and talking and scribbling and talking – Ritsu has no limit on how much maths he’s capable of experiencing; Ritsu is clever and talented and lucky, assuming that it is lucky to be capable of experiencing unlimited maths...
Too hard to decide. Mob folds his arms and puts his head comfortably down again, watching Ritsu’s hand moving over the page. He’s writing numbers and talking about numbers, and he’s good at doing both those things, so probably he’s enjoying himself. The sound of his voice is confident as it passes over Mob, familiar and easy: it’s nice to listen, not understanding, not trying to.
In the evening quiet of the house, Ritsu’s grey sweatshirt cuff is making small scuffing sounds against the page every time he moves his hand. Maybe it’s only Mob who can hear those sounds, with his head down, so much closer. It’s nice being with Ritsu and not doing anything. It’s nice being with Ritsu and doing anything.
Mob’s thinking, but he isn’t thinking hard. Research without Ritsu isn’t a good kind of research. Research with Ritsu would be different, though. Research with Ritsu would be an entirely new kind of research, and the involvement of Ritsu means it would surely be the nicest kind.
“—do this in school?” Ritsu says, and then because he doesn’t say anything else afterwards Mob realises he’s asked a question and must be waiting for an answer, so Mob says, “Yes,” and hopes for the best.
“Nii-san,” Ritsu says, affronted. “Were you sleeping?”
“No,” Mob says, relieved to have a question he can answer with confidence this time. “No, I was awake. I’m awake. Could we try kissing?”
“No,” Ritsu says, jolting so suddenly upright in his desk chair that Mob raises his head from his arms again to look at him, surprised. “No! No – what? You don’t want that. Don’t say that, you don’t want that, you don’t have to keep trying to make me feel like I’m not—”
“Not if you don’t want to,” Mob says. “I just thought... Just to try. Maybe it would be nice.”
“You don’t want to,” Ritsu insists.
“No, but... I don’t know. I mean – I don’t know if I don’t,” Mob says. “If I do or don’t. So that’s why. I thought – maybe then, I will know... But we don’t have to,” he says, trying to be as reassuring as he can: Ritsu’s looking at him with a wide wild stare and gripping his pencil as tightly as though he’s expecting Mob to try to snatch it from his hand by sheer brute force any moment now, “not if you don’t want to, I just thought... To find out. But we don’t have to,” he says again, conciliatory.
Ritsu stares and stares and stares. In his first shock he accidentally skidded his chair away from Mob’s desk; now, he scoots himself in again and puts the pencil down on Mob’s maths book, and then he keeps staring. His shoulders are as tense and his back as straight as though there’s a coat-hanger inside him, holding up all his bones. “You shouldn’t be thinking about this,” he says, in a strange small pulled-tight voice. “You shouldn’t even be able to think about it, nii-san, it should make you sick, it should – it’s too bad for people even to think about it, usually: that’s how you should feel about it. That’s what’s normal. They’re bad thoughts and no one wants them.”
“I could never have bad thoughts about you,” Mob says with confidence.
“About this,” says Ritsu, clapping his hand hard against the place where his heart is. “You shouldn’t keep thinking about it! You shouldn’t even be able to, you’re supposed to be sick when you think about it. You should be running to the toilet to go and throw up the moment you even think about thinking about it.”
His voice is so full of conviction that Mob sits up straighter, concentrating on his stomach, to find out if it’ll go reeling and show him that really he is sick, already, and hasn’t noticed, and should race for the bathroom before both of them suffer for it – but Mob’s stomach is calm; his insides all feel ordinary. “When I think about you,” he says doubtfully, to check. “You and kissing.”
“Doesn’t that make you feel sick?” Ritsu says, with a voice full of encouragement and an expression full of half-manic despair. “It should make you feel sick, it makes everyone feel sick, that’s just the natural reaction. The human reaction. Everyone’s just born with that reaction. You said I should do my research too, nii-san; I did my research. That’s just how people are. They all feel sick about it.”
“But people always confess to you,” Mob says. “They can’t all feel sick when they think about kissing you, or they wouldn’t confess. It’d be no good confessing to someone you can’t ever think about kissing.”
“No,” Ritsu says, “no, I don’t mean me and – and kissing, not specifically me. I mean... your brother and kissing. That’s what I mean. That’s what makes everyone sick, that’s the disgusting part, that’s what—Nii-san,” he says suddenly, looking past Mob’s shoulder with his expression wiped abruptly blank by horror, “your door’s still open.”
Mob lifts a hand: behind him, his door shuts itself obligingly. “But I don’t get it,” he says. “Maybe if someone had a bad brother. If their brother was already disgusting. Maybe if he never took baths and he wasn’t kind. That might be bad to think about... But you’re just Ritsu. It’s never bad thinking about you.”
“It should be,” Ritsu says, ominously.
Mob’s quiet; he’s thinking hard. Two important things are trying to happen at once, and it’s difficult to make sure both of them get enough of his attention: trying to understand Ritsu, and trying to persuade Ritsu to understand him. At last he says, “Is it bad when you think about it, then...? About kissing? Do you feel sick?”
“I should do,” Ritsu says.
“But you don’t?”
“I should do,” Ritsu says again, moving his stare down from Mob’s face to his own hands, which are in his lap and each holding the other one so tightly that it doesn’t look at all comfortable; his fingers are paler than they should be from how tightly Ritsu’s fastened his grip. “I should do. I’m sick, for not feeling sick about it; that’s how it works, I should be disgusted, but I’m not, so I’m disgusting, that’s the way it works.”
“But I don’t feel sick either,” Mob says. “So I’m disgusting too.”
“No,” Ritsu says immediately, vehemently, “no, you just – you just don’t get it. That’s different. It’s like being allergic. I’m supposed to be allergic but I’m not. You just, you just haven’t had your shots yet. To make you allergic. But you will be allergic, because you should be. Everyone is.”
Mob considers this. “That’s the opposite of medicine,” he says at length. “Medicine stops you being allergic.”
“It wasn’t a good comparison,” Ritsu says, looking down at his hands.
Mob nods understandingly, even though Ritsu won’t see. “How do you feel, then?” he asks. “When you think about it. Kissing me.”
“Don’t ask me that,” Ritsu says in a small voice.
“If you don’t feel sick,” Mob says, persevering. “Do you like it? Is it good?”
Ritsu’s quiet for so long that it starts seeming like he’s going to pretend not to have heard the question in order to get out of answering it – which Ritsu does, sometimes; it’s a bad habit which he probably learned from Mob, who does it a hundred times more often than Ritsu ever does – but Ritsu isn’t pretending: he’s only thinking.
Eventually, in an even smaller voice, Ritsu says, “Good. And bad, for feeling good. And...”
He trails off and doesn’t continue, and doesn’t look up from his hands folded tightly together in his lap, either.
“We could try,” Mob says to him seriously. “Not if you don’t want to. If you’d feel bad. But – if it’s okay, then...”
It seems to take Ritsu all the effort in the world to raise his head enough to look at Mob, and then after that he has no effort left for anything else, like speaking, or moving; he only looks and looks at Mob with a strong, complicated expression that gets stronger and more complicated the more he keeps looking at Mob.
“Is it okay?” Mob says.
“Of course not,” Ritsu says immediately, forcefully; it bursts out of him like he’s a soft toy with a squeaker inside him that automatically blurts the same thing every time he’s pressed.
“Oh,” Mob says, and sits back again. “Oh – well, okay. That’s okay. We don’t have to try if you—”
“In general, I mean,” Ritsu says hastily, speaking so quickly that he’s scrambling over the ever-mounting wreckage of all his previous words in his hurry to get the next ones out, “in general, because of, of being brothers, it’s not okay, of course it’s not okay, but – now, I mean, just now, if we just, if it’s us, just trying, that’s not a – in a general sense it’s not okay, that’s what I meant, socially, morally, though actually you could argue it’s a tangled ethical conundrum, it’s very, um, contextually dependent, in society, different societies, there’re a lot of different perspectives when you think about it, overall, so it’s not as cut and dried as people always—But this is okay. Specifically it’s okay. I mean, this specifically is okay. Just trying. This is okay,” Ritsu says, and shuts his mouth as abruptly as though he’s trying to catch his tongue by surprise.
“Oh,” says Mob, bewildered but nevertheless impressed by how quickly Ritsu is capable of talking. “Um, then – it is okay...?”
Ritsu nods strongly. He doesn’t seem to trust himself to open his mouth again.
“Okay,” Mob says with determination, and shuffles his old wooden chair around on the floorboards until he’s facing Ritsu, who’s still staring, sitting very still on his own comfortable grey computer chair.
Mob leans towards him. Ritsu stays where he is. Mob puts one hand down on the seat of Ritsu’s chair, on the grey fabric beside Ritsu’s leg, and leans in towards him again – nearer, this time, because of his better balance: Ritsu still doesn’t move.
“Ritsu,” says Mob.
Ritsu keeps staring and keeps not moving.
“I can’t reach,” Mob explains, and beckons him in the same way he’d beckon him to come and look at an interesting sort of beetle, or come and have first choice of the selection of flavoured yoghurts in the fridge, or come and be nearer for any reason at all, any time of any day. That small, ordinary gesture is enough to jolt Ritsu back into his automatic responses: he reacts immediately, obediently, and moves in to give and receive a kiss – both at the same time, so that together their mouths make a sound like all kisses do, that normal firm damp noise, and then they sit apart from each other again.
“Like that?” Mob asks.
“Maybe,” Ritsu says. He’s looking everywhere apart from Mob’s face, even though Mob’s face is still right in front of his own and would be by far the easiest thing for him to look at. He moves his knees primly aside, so that there’s no risk of his thigh accidentally brushing Mob’s hand where it’s still braced on the seat of his chair. “Maybe, I mean – it’s, um... It might be – longer.”
“Longer,” says Mob.
“Than that,” says Ritsu. “Usually. If you wanted, if you really, if – if you wanted to try, then that’s... That’s how I think people usually—”
“Okay,” Mob says again, and promptly leans back in; he watches Ritsu’s mouth until it’s too close to be watched and then he feels it against his own instead, warm and unlike anything else Mob’s mouth is accustomed to touching: food, or water bottles, or the papery fabric of the inside of a mask in hayfever season. This mouth belongs to another person, he thinks to himself with great seriousness; it belongs to Ritsu – and the thought swells with importance inside him: this is something very special and grave. Kissing is something serious; someone else’s mouth pressed to your own mouth is very personal, and private, which makes it an honour to be chosen by someone for the privilege of experiencing it. It’s important that Ritsu wants to do this with him. It’s important that it’s Ritsu and important that he wants it and important that it’s him – that it’s them.
Even blurred by extreme close-up double vision, Mob can see Ritsu’s eyelashes flattened blackly against his cheeks. If Ritsu’s eyes are closed, then perhaps Mob’s should be too.
He closes them. The brightness of his desk lamp still shines through his eyelids, but apart from that he can’t see anything now. Instead he can feel the rough fabric of Ritsu’s seat cushion under his palm, and the warmth of Ritsu’s leg against his wrist where Ritsu’s forgotten to keep vigilantly avoiding all contact with him, and the odd ticklish feeling of Ritsu breathing quickly through his nose; and as well he can feel Ritsu’s mouth, which is warm, and not doing much apart from being closed against Mob’s – and then Ritsu makes the kissing sound again and pulls away, and Mob supposes it must be time to open his eyes again: so he does.
Ritsu is red, and still breathing just as quickly. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“No,” says Mob.
“Yes,” says Ritsu, fervently. “You’d never have done that if it wasn’t for me. You wouldn’t even have thought about it. You wouldn’t ever have wanted to try it and you wouldn’t ever have tried it and you wouldn’t even ever have thought of trying it, and even if you had you’d have been grossed out, you’d have been sick, like you should be, like you would be, if—”
“I wouldn’t have done lots of things if someone hadn’t made me think about it first,” Mob says, pragmatically. “Putting mustard on sweetcorn. Dad suggested that to me. I thought – mustard, and sweetcorn...? It was nice, anyway.”
“But you like sweetcorn,” Ritsu says. “People are supposed to like sweetcorn. It’s healthy, it’s good for you, it’s normal to like it. Sweetcorn is a popular vegetable and it has vitamins in it.”
“Both things,” Mob says. “Sweetcorn, and kissing you. I meant both things were nice.”
Ritsu sits back hard against his chair as though Mob’s whole bedroom has been travelling fast and now suddenly braked to a halt: he’s been sent flying back with the shock of his own momentum. “Nice?”
“It’s important. Kissing is, it’s private. That’s important. And you’re my brother, so it’s nice... Us doing something important. And it’s you,” Mob says, pleased by this clear and comprehensive explanation. “So that’s nice, too. Everything’s nice with you.”
“Nice,” Ritsu echoes, staring up with huge eyes at the ceiling and then at the bookshelves and then at the floor and its clean bare floorboards which are shining in the light, “nice,” he says dazedly to Mob’s desk, and Mob’s maths books, and then his stare comes into slightly more focus and he says, “Your maths homework, nii-san—”
“It’s not due till Saturday,” Mob says. “And it’s not bad to try something just because someone else suggested it,” he says to Ritsu sensibly, but Ritsu doesn’t seem to hear and doesn’t seem able to be sensible, either.
“Nice,” Ritsu says again. “Okay, I mean okay, I mean—it’s my bedtime, I’m going to, I’ll, um—” He’s on his feet, jittery in his faded green slippers. It’s not his bedtime. He looks at the curtains pulled closed above Mob’s desk and then he looks away at the opposite wall, which is white, and bare, and has his own room on the other side of it. “Sleep well,” he says, and bolts for the door.
Mob turns back to his maths books. His pencil is lying where Ritsu dropped it. He moves it, and shuts his books one after the other, methodically, enjoying as always the experience of no longer seeing maths in a place where previously he was seeing maths; he stacks his books at the side of his desk and waits, because Ritsu is very clever, and has a strong memory which doesn’t let things slip through its gaps the way that Mob’s does.
Sure enough, Ritsu’s at his door again in moments. “My chair,” he explains, and comes hurrying back in to collect it and wheel it rattling away across the floorboards to the door, where it gets stuck. “It’s okay,” Ritsu says quickly, when Mob moves to help, “I’ve got it, I’ll just—” He’s wrestling with the seat, trying to turn the spokes of the wheels around; something moves and the chair slips through, and he dips his head in hasty goodbye and vanishes, rattling, down the dark hallway with his chair skidding along behind him.
Maths homework and research and moving chairs: anything can be nice, so long as it’s with Ritsu.
-
At the breakfast table the next morning Ritsu is attentive and restless, hovering around the kitchen after he’s finished eating like he doesn’t want to risk going too far away from Mob in case something happens and he misses it; like a fidgety hummingbird keeping its favourite flower under skittish supervision, from fear of what might happen if it turns its back.
Mob finishes his cereal. He puts down his spoon and pushes back his chair.
“Are you okay?” Ritsu blurts. “Feeling okay? I mean, do you feel, are you feeling—How do you feel?”
“I feel okay,” Mob says.
“Are you sure?” Ritsu says at once, tensely.
Mob is: he confirms it. “Are you okay?” he asks, in the spirit of brotherly fairness.
“I’m okay,” Ritsu says dismissively, shaking his head to show how utterly unimportant the question is. “I’m okay, I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Are you sure you’re okay, nii-san? It’s okay if you’re not okay. You can tell me if you’re not okay, you can stay home, you can tell Mum and Dad and stay home from school and that’s okay, if you’re not okay. Not being okay would be okay, under the, um. Circumstances.”
“But I am okay,” Mob says.
“But if you weren’t,” Ritsu says.
“But I am,” Mob says. If he took three steps forwards he could kiss Ritsu politely good morning the same brief way their parents politely kiss good morning and afterwards Mob would still be okay, just as okay as he is now, and that would prove to Ritsu that he means it; but in exchange Ritsu himself might become no longer okay, and that wouldn’t be fair: Ritsu has important places to be.
Instead, Mob takes two steps forwards and stops in front of Ritsu and lifts up his hand from the countertop. It’s cold and slightly clammy. So is Mob’s. He holds it seriously between them and waits to see if anything will happen.
Ritsu watches their hands alertly for a moment, like he’s waiting for the same thing Mob is and neither of them is sure how long they ought to wait before it happens. Then he says, “Are you shaking my hand?”
“I’m holding it,” Mob explains.
“Okay,” Ritsu says. “Okay, I just thought – because it’s like you’re shaking hands.”
“But I’m not shaking it. I’m not moving it.”
“But that’s how you shake hands. With that hand. That’s the hand for shaking hands.”
“You can’t hold hands with the same hand for shaking hands...?”
“No – no, I mean, you can hold hands like that, I think you can, just not... Maybe not like this,” Ritsu says in a fast serious voice; he’s nervous but he’s clever, he’s cleverer than he’s nervous. “I think you have to use – I mean, when it’s our opposite hands, like this, and we’re face to face, we’re standing up, then that’s, it’s sort of shaking hands. Like we’re making a deal. Like business.”
Mob moves his hand experimentally. At once they’re shaking hands: Ritsu was right. Of course Ritsu was right. The satisfaction of knowing Ritsu was right far outweighs the mild disappointment of having mistakenly shaken Ritsu’s hand instead of holding it. “I was just finding out,” Mob explains, and puts Ritsu’s hand back down on the countertop for him. “For research. Ah – aren’t you going to be late, Ritsu...? It’s gone seven already.”
“Has it?” Ritsu says in alarm; he checks the clock on the microwave, and whirls and sprints from the kitchen. His footsteps race around upstairs and barely two minutes later he passes by in a blur of grey and black and panic, and the front door shuts hard behind him.
Eventually Mob sets out, too. He really is okay. He’s fine. He’s feeling ordinary and mild and only the usual amount of slightly dismal about having to spend another day at school, but that’s okay, too; that’s normal. He’s thinking, absent-mindedly, alone on the cold morning trudge to school; he’s letting himself think, encouraging himself to think.
The last of the careful mental barricades set up to pace the rate at which he thinks about Ritsu have been removed. Now, at last, Mob’s free to think about it as much as he wants to.
Most evenings last summer, he and Ritsu sat down together at half past eight to watch the latest episode of a police drama which ran all summer long. In the first episode the victim’s grown-up daughter was introduced in a suspicious way with red stains on her clothes which she said were paint, or tomato sauce; Mob at once felt wisely sure that it must be blood and she must be the murderer, and Ritsu at once insisted that she couldn’t be, it was too obvious, it was a red herring and nothing more – but dozens of episodes and innumerable twists and turns later, the detectives arrested her and said that she was the murderer, and Ritsu was shocked: a double bluff, he said in awe, a triple bluff, layer upon layer of bluffing...
But in the first episode she had had blood on her clothes, and she’d been suspicious: to Mob, it just seemed obvious.
And maybe this is the same kind of thing: something which is obvious to Mob, but which Ritsu won’t allow to be obvious. The matter of kissing Ritsu should make him sick, according to Ritsu: but Mob isn’t sick when he thinks of kissing Ritsu. He wasn’t sick when he was kissing Ritsu. He isn’t sick now he’s remembering kissing Ritsu. To Mob, it just seems obvious: kissing Ritsu isn’t going to make him sick.
Perhaps there’s one specific part of kissing which is the part that ought to make Mob sick – but that’s hard to imagine, too: nothing about kissing Ritsu seems like something which could merit that reaction. It’s not like food gone old and mouldy, or a zigzagging mountain road unevenly paved; kissing Ritsu doesn’t have the risk of sickness hidden inside it. It’s like saying that Thursday mornings should make him sick, or napping on weekends, or walking past a cat grooming itself on a garden wall: it doesn’t have any connection to sickness at all.
Ritsu’s sure that kissing should be enough to make Mob sick, and Ritsu is usually right – usually, but not always: sometimes even Ritsu can be wrong. Sometimes Ritsu is too young to understand things. Sometimes Ritsu thinks so much that he doesn’t notice that whatever it is he’s thinking about requires much less thinking than he’s used to, and instead he makes everything much cleverer and more complicated than it really is. Sometimes things really are as straightforward as they seem to Mob, even when—
“—you explain it for us, Kageyama-kun?” says the voice of an irritated teacher.
“Ah,” Mob says, sitting bolt upright in alarm, “ah, um – well...”
Numbers and symbols on the whiteboard, piling up on each other and getting tangled: he’s in a science lesson. Around him, science must be under discussion; the teacher’s voice, if Mob had been listening, would probably have been telling him about science. He’s in a science lesson and thinking about Ritsu; if Ritsu was in a science lesson he’d surely be thinking about science. Maybe Ritsu is in a science lesson – Mob doesn’t know his timetable; there’s no reason he wouldn’t be. Maybe Mob is in a science lesson thinking about Ritsu being in a science lesson and at the very same time Ritsu is in a science lesson, thinking about science, which means that in a way they’re both—
“Kageyama-kun,” his science teacher says sharply, and Mob’s shoulders leap towards his ears, “have you listened to a word I’ve said? Would you like to come up to the whiteboard and demonstrate for all of us just how many words you’ve listened to?”
Mob wouldn’t like that at all. Unfortunately, what Mob wants tends to have very little impact on what his teachers want. He takes a deep breath, pushes back his chair, and summons all his courage in preparation for walking the terrible gauntlet to the front.
-
The school day ends. Nothing else steps in to replace it: no club practice, no office hours, no cram school, no sightings of Ritsu, no readily available friends with spare time of their own to kill; nothing awaits Mob now but home, and homework, and more homework after that, and he sets out from school dawdling even more slowly than usual, looking at the clouds, looking at cigarette stubs on the street, looking at shops’ illuminated signs, looking hopefully around for anything that might put an obstacle between himself and his homework.
His phone buzzes for attention. “Listen, when I say crisis situation I mean crisis, so hear me out, Mob, will you—”
“Yes,” Mob says in relief, “yes, okay. Where are you?”
Reigen is at a hotel. Within twenty minutes, so is Mob. Within thirty minutes, the great big steamy laundry room of the hotel is no longer being haunted by a mischievous and moderately evil spirit: the hotel’s dirty sheets, when thrown into the vat to await their turn for washing, and the hotel’s clean sheets, when placed neatly and freshly folded on the shelves to be taken up to the guests’ rooms, are no longer being sneakily switched with each other as soon as the laundry staff’s backs are turned.
“Could make a bit of extra money renting out five minutes in there as a bargain-value sauna experience,” Reigen says, wringing out the front of his shirt as they emerge from the steaming innards of the laundry room. “Not as a sauna, you’ve got to assume there’d be legalities around that kind of thing – but a sauna experience, now...”
Mob, sodden with sweat and laundry steam, says nothing. He’s leaving damp footsteps behind him on the polished hotel flooring; he’s thinking hard. Doing research on Ritsu without Ritsu upset Ritsu, so Mob can’t do that anymore. But asking for other kinds of advice wouldn’t count as research – or at least it wouldn’t count as research on Ritsu, which is what matters. It would just be general research. Background research. Supplementary research, to improve Mob’s overall emotional understanding of topics including but not limited to Ritsu, and romance, and the top secret combination of the two.
“Is that the hotel restaurant?” Reigen says with sudden interest, peering through the gap in two tall grand doors. “Check it out, Mob – don’t see fancy little bronze napkin holders like that every day, do you? About this fee you’re paying me,” he begins, turning on the hotel manager accompanying them, “how willing would you be to waive a portion of it in return for a free meal for two? Including dessert and a choice of soft drinks, and no complaints if my young apprentice here should happen to spill something on those exquisite white tablecloths of yours?”
Mob says, “You’re the one who—”
“I know, I know, but it’s more forgivable if it’s you,” Reigen says in an undertone, “you’ve got that well-meaning look about you. Confused, but sorry about it. How did that tomato sauce get all over the floor? I’m just doing business, Mob.”
And Reigen is very good at doing business, even if he isn’t very good at making sure that tomato sauce doesn’t get all over the floor: they’re ushered in for their free meal for two, and Mob keeps thinking hard, and by the time their empty plates are cleared and replaced with new menus which involve much more in the way of chocolate and sugar and sweet red beans, Mob’s more or less recovered from the laundry room – his hair now only damp, and no longer dripping; his soggy uniform jacket drying on the back of his chair.
“Not too talkative today, are you?” Reigen says.
Mob lifts his gaze in silence from the dessert menu.
“Less talkative than usual,” Reigen amends. “How’s all the high school stuff going? All the studying? All the maths? You need any homework help?”
“Ritsu already helped me,” Mob says. “Shishou, I was thinking. If someone says you can have something – if they offer it... But you’re not sure if you’ll like it or not. You don’t know yet. Because you don’t have it. Then – what?”
“Depends,” Reigen says, brandishing his water glass judiciously to and fro. “How much are they asking you to pay for it?”
“It’s free,” Mob says.
“A gift,” Reigen says wisely, “I see, I see. How much would you be paying, if it wasn’t a gift?”
“No,” Mob says, “no – it’s free. It’s always free. You can’t buy it.”
“Not even online? You can buy anything online nowadays, you know. Pyjamas. Fish tank filters. Followers to remedy the unjustly low engagement numbers of your social media accounts. A quick browse around some popular online shopping destinations might give you a rough idea of the price range we’re working with here, Mob—”
“You can’t buy it online,” Mob says. “You can’t buy it anywhere. It’s not that sort of thing.”
“Limited edition?” Reigen says. “Unavailable for mass-market purchase? One-off custom run?”
“Maybe,” Mob says doubtfully, thinking of Ritsu – but then, Ritsu is limited edition: he’s the only Ritsu there is, and Ritsu has already made it very clear that he’s unavailable for mass-market purchase because he’s only willing to be available for Mob’s own specific purchase. “I think, um... Sort of. There’s no cost.”
“I see,” Reigen says again, and bows his head as though the sheer quantity of wisdom it contains makes it hard to hold upright in the normal way. “In that case, Mob, what you’re being offered is either priceless or worthless, and that means you should certainly accept it.”
“Oh,” Mob says, caught off guard by the sudden authoritative impact of Reigen’s advice. “Oh, um – it does...?”
“Worst case scenario, you can sell it on, can’t you? Or toss it out on the relevant recycling day, whichever you prefer. Best case scenario,” Reigen goes on with careless confidence, leaning back to try to catch the eye of a passing waiter, “now you’re in possession of this priceless item that’s only going to appreciate in value over the years, and that’s the kind of financial ace it always serves to have tucked away up your sleeve. And don’t forget you’ll be able to make a killing with it on any internet auction site, should you so wish. ‘Scuse me – yeah, I’ll have the lemon sorbet. Mob?”
Mob would like the strawberry cream cake, and he says so. The fundamental instinct to believe in Reigen when Reigen speaks so convincingly and explains his arguments so thoroughly is warring inside him with the lurking awareness that not everything Reigen has just said might be applicable to Ritsu – that, in fact, very little of what Reigen’s just said is applicable to Ritsu; that trying to get Reigen’s advice on Ritsu without telling him the topic is Ritsu might not be the best way to get advice on Ritsu at all.
Mob says, “What if it’s the kind of thing you can’t sell on the internet?”
“Oh, you can sell anything on the internet,” Reigen says. “Trust me. Anything. Used undershirts. Pens with no ink left in them. Stones from the park with a little boat drawn on them in glitter glue – arts and crafts, you’ve got to call it, and then they eat that crap right up. Welcome to the twenty-first century, kiddo.”
But Ritsu can’t be thrown out with the recycling and Ritsu’s feelings can’t be sold on an online auction site and Ritsu is not any sort of ace card and wouldn’t fit up Mob’s sleeve, unless Mob himself wasn’t wearing his sleeve at the time, and Ritsu was instead just trying on a piece of Mob’s clothing, which has happened plenty of times before with none of the same results that Reigen’s assuring Mob it would do.
“Look, if you don’t want it, you don’t want it,” Reigen says, when Mob keeps frowning worriedly down at the table. “If you don’t want it, don’t take it. Say no. Make them chuck it out for recycling themselves.”
“But I don’t don’t want it,” Mob says. “I don’t not want it... Ah, I might do want it. I mean – I do might want it. I might... want do it? Um...”
“You’ll never know if you never try,” Reigen says, and he claps his hands together and rubs them vigorously in celebration of their arriving desserts.
Mob picks up his fork and puts it down again, staring in preoccupation at his strawberry cream cake. “What if I’ve already, if I’ve, um – if I’ve, sort of... already tried it a bit?”
“Try before you buy,” Reigen says promptly. “A wise approach for consumers interested in exploring their options before committing to a purchase. Impractical in the psychic industry, of course, which is why all of our clients are required to buy before they try; but a wise approach in general, certainly. Very wise of you, Mob.”
“...How much can you try before you, um. Buy?”
“As much as they’ll let you.”
Mob eyes his strawberry cream cake with deepening concern. “Is that really fair...?”
“If they’re letting you do it, how can it be unfair?” Reigen says, throwing out his hands with such conviction that a dollop of lemon sorbet catapults from his spoon and lands on the next table. “Some might say you’re taking liberties, but I say, well, what’s liberty for, if not taking it? Hm? If they don’t want you trying as much as you can before you buy then they should have put stricter limitations on the pre-sale trial period.”
“But it’s not for sale,” Mob says.
“The pre-giveaway trial period,” Reigen says. “The pre-donation test period. The pre-gift experimental period, whatever. Are you going to eat that cake, or can I—” He yanks his hand back to himself with a startled yelp. “Mob,” Reigen says to him, aggrieved.
Mob puts his barrier down again. “I’m going to eat it,” he says mildly, and pulls his plate in close.