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Though the late autumn’s last-ditch heat had finally passed, anticipation hung heavy over the Salt Middle schoolyard the afternoon of October tenth.
Not to mention the additional awkwardness of Serizawa and Dimple loitering indiscreetly on the opposite side of the front gate to talk through the fence to Shigeo, Ritsu, and the misfit crew that comprised the Telepathy Club. Serizawa kept glancing around, as if the local police might jump him for consorting with this slough of middle schoolers during school hours. To be fair, it wasn’t a great look--but they had a party to plan.
“The divorce lawyer in the office down the hall is letting us keep the cake in her fridge; I’ve got the candy and chips stashed in the file cabinet by my desk--”
“You sure he won’t find them there?” Ritsu asked, crooking his brow.
“I’ve never seen Master Reigen open one of those cabinets in my life,” Shigeo scoffed, leaning on one arm against the fence rail. “Not sure why he’d start now.”
Serizawa nodded, pulled a little notebook decorated with stickers out of his pocket. “He’s got an appointment right at three, but the inquiry didn’t sound like much more than noisy neighbors to me--somebody’s going to have to go with him and make sure to keep him occupied if the case gets dealt with earlier than four-thirty.”
“You can’t go?” Shigeo asked.
Serizawa shook his head. “Somebody has to answer the phones while he’s away, and Tome…” the man paused to sigh, look up at the autumn foliage above his head.
“Is she okay?” Inukawa asked.
“She’s fine. More than fine. Got detention,” Serizawa replied, jutting his chin out in frustration. “Perfect timing, as always.”
Dimple laughed. “I’m rubbing off on her. Taught her how to make the perfect paper airplanes for a straight shot--” the spirit used his hand to draw a line from above his wispy form into the air just before Shigeo’s nose-- “right onto the top of Reigen’s head when he’s at his desk. Or, uh, her teacher’s, in this case.”
Shigeo’s scowl for the spirit quickly transformed into a gleaming smile of promise. “Oh, of course! You can keep him company, Dimple.”
“I can--what? You’re relegating me to the designated distraction? How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
Shigeo shrugged. “Ask him if he wants to take a walk or something. You two hang out all the time; why’s it such an issue now?”
“We don’t hang out ,” the spirit spat, flushing under the skeptical gazes of all these gossipy middle schoolers (and Serizawa). “I mean--not, like, officially. We just… happen to be in the right place at the right time, and then we go grab ramen, or see a movie, or some shit. What am I gonna do to keep the king of hyperactivity occupied for an hour if it doesn’t involve food?”
“He always gets sentimental on his birthday. I’m sure he’ll be glad just to have the company, Dimple.” With this, the boy jabbed an accusatory finger into the spirit’s face. “Don’t let him get bummed out, though. He’s gonna think we all forgot his birthday--especially me--and you have to serve as a buffer against the inevitable depression that’ll come along with that. Imply we all love him very much, let him know I’d love to have made it and send him my best wishes; just don’t give the surprise away.”
“I think I can handle one stupid secret,” Dimple snapped back.
Shigeo raised his eyebrows, and that was all Dimple needed to throw up his hands in resignation.
“Fine, fine, whatever! Let ol’ loudmouthed Dimple spend a little hour-long sobfest with the conman! Take his ass to the fuckin’ zoo or some shit. Reflect on lost youth. Fuck me.”
Serizawa released another exasperated breath. “Language, Dimple.”
“Yeah, language , Dimple,” all those dastardly middle schoolers parroted in an almost eerie tandem.
“Devil children, all of you.”
Before Dimple could curse them all with poor luck in their entrance exams, Shigeo gently reached up to touch the spirit’s cheek.
“You’ve got the most important job out of all of us, and no one can do it better than you. I appreciate your help, and Reigen will, too.”
Dimple very nearly melted away from the kid’s touch. “Yeah, yeah, he’d better. Now, hands off. I hate it when you get all mushy.”
“Sure.” Shigeo turned to Serizawa now, craning up to catch his eyes. “Ritsu and I will get to the office at four-fifteen. When does Tome get out of detention?”
“Three-forty-five. She’ll be at Spirits and Such well in time, don’t worry.”
“Hasn’t quit blabbing about the party since we started planning,” Dimple muttered.
Shigeo clasped his hands together to smile around his cohorts. “Good. You two should head back to the office--where does Master Reigen think you are right now, anyways?”
Serizawa and Dimple shared a glance. “Getting him coffee.”
“Well, go! You can’t let on that there’s anything fishy happening today. Tell him there was a long line at the cafe, or--”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll figure it out,” Dimple groaned.
Serizawa shot Shigeo a smile. “Don’t worry, Sensei. Everything’s going to go perfectly.”
Shigeo returned the man’s smile as he and the spirit left the school gates, Serizawa tracking down their nearest Starbucks.
“Micromanaging little asshole,” Dimple grumbled fondly. “Love him to death, but jeez , can he ever domineer like the best of ‘em.”
“I wonder where he learned that from,” Serizawa replied, glancing up mischievously from his phone.
“Ugh. Mini-Reigen.” Dimple laughed at the thought. “Reigen 2.0. The Cooler Reigen.”
Serizawa covered his mouth with a hand to hide the laughter behind it. Dimple fluttered down to grin triumphantly at the sound--making Serizawa laugh on the daily was one of his favorite personal challenges, though he wouldn’t be caught dead admitting something so… nice.
Not that endeavoring to be nice wasn’t another challenge he’d taken on as of late. But that too went unspoken, naturally.
-
Reigen paused for a long stretch when he and Dimple stepped out into the brisk October air.
“I don’t think I’ve been outside all day but for the walk here,” he groaned, arms high and taut above his head. “It’s so nice out.”
“Finally seems to have cooled down for good,” Dimple agreed.
Conversation stayed strictly business for the walk to the station, train ride, and the job itself--as Serizawa predicted, the exorcism was nothing more than a restless old neighbor banging his cane around the upstairs apartment each night. Reigen threw some salt, Dimple poked around the building for other spirits. They were back out onto the street within the half hour, leaving Dimple to keep Reigen entertained and far away from Spirits and Such. Okay. Okay, he could do this.
It wasn’t until about now that the spirit noticed that his companion hadn’t been particularly talkative. Needless to say, that was unlike him--Dimple fluttered a bit closer to get a good look at the conman’s face.
Reigen shot Dimple a look through his periphery, smirked.
“You need something?”
Dimple weighed his options. He remembered Shigeo’s warnings, and looked elsewhere. “No, nothing. I just, um--happy birthday, and all that.”
Reigen stopped walking, positively gaped at the spirit.
“You remembered.”
Dimple smiled coyly. “‘Course I did. Couldn’t easily forget last year, after all.”
Reigen grinned.
“Anyways, I’d have gotten you something, but, uh--”
“You don’t have money.”
Dimple snapped his fingers and pointed half-heartedly in Reigen’s direction. “Yeah, don’t, uh… don’t have money. Not to mention the whole intangibility thing. Might’ve been tough trying to partake in a transaction without being, um… visible.”
“You could’ve held up a little sign,” Reigen grinned, slowly stepping onwards. “‘I’m a ghost and I need to buy this deliberately ugly tie for my--”
“Friend,” Dimple said.
“Coworker,” Reigen said at the exact same time.
They met eyes for a much-too-long moment. Dimple decidedly did not acknowledge how happy Reigen suddenly looked.
“Well, point is, it didn’t pan out. You get me. No gift, just… my presence,” Dimple cracked. Reigen laughed, of course he laughed; he loved Dimple’s stupid puns and Dimple loved that he loved them.
That they’d pushed far enough to quit falsifying that.
“It’s a good gift,” Reigen told him. A bit softer: “Kind of the best I could ask for these days, really.”
Dimple furrowed his brow. “That’s either the saddest thing you’ve ever said to me or the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. And I’m kind of hoping it’s the former, because I’d worry you’d lost your mind if it wasn’t.”
Reigen stopped walking again and gave the spirit a hesitant little smile. “It’s really not meant to be sad. I mean--I don’t know; when I was a kid, birthdays gave me awful anxiety. Could never get to sleep the night before.”
“How come?” Dimple asked, scratching the crest of his wispy form. “I--okay, wait. Do you wanna just… not go back to the office for a little bit?”
Reigen cocked his head. “How come?”
“I dunno; I…” Dimple felt awfully shy, suddenly. “We haven’t got anything else scheduled for the afternoon, and Serizawa’s got things covered in case any walk-ins show up.” He gestured around aimlessly. “If I’m all you’ve got on your docket for your thirtieth birthday, I kinda feel obligated to make it not suck ass, y’know?”
Blinking in wonderment, Reigen smiled.
“We can just wander around; I dunno. I don’t think I’ve ever been on this side of town, and it’s nice out, and fucking say something, asshole; I sound like a total idiot right now.”
“No, no, I’d like that!” Reigen laughed. “Sorry. We just--spend a lot of time together, incidentally, but I feel like this is the first time we’ve ever… hung out. Officially. It’s not our style.”
My thoughts exactly, Dimple reflected exasperatedly. “Yeah, well, I’ve never had much sense for style.”
Reigen spent one more tedious second smiling at the awkward spirit before he gave one last nod, began strolling at a gentler pace in the opposite direction. “Let’s wander around, then.”
Yes, Dimple could do this--at the expense of his pride, it seemed, but the feat wasn’t impossible.
The suburb through which they walked was crowded and hilly, stacked wooden houses stuck together and hidden behind trees turning vibrant oranges and golds. Every now and then, the great slope back into the city peeked in from between the buildings and trees; down the foothills lay Seasoning City’s glittering silver buildings and winding blue river.
“So… I’d get nervous before my birthday as a kid,” Reigen began again, once they’d set their leisurely pace, “because I worried I wouldn’t react properly to whatever gifts I got, or surprises my classmates threw, or whatever. I’d practice expressions in the bathroom mirror before bed.”
Dimple laughed. “Sounds on-brand.”
“But when you get older, and the world stops pausing just for you to celebrate for a day, the most you can hope for is something easy. Normal day at work, normal morning, normal evening. Maybe you buy yourself a treat for after dinner, go grab a drink. But it’s so much easier to treat the day the way everyone else does, just to save yourself the pressure of trying to make it special.” He paused for a moment. Before Dimple could respond: “I know that sounds depressing, but there’s something nice about being eased of that personal responsibility, y’know? ‘Cause when you’re young, there’s no greater failure than a bad birthday. It’s a sign of having come of age, not having to force goodness and excitement around every turn.”
Dimple nodded. Reigen was not a laid-back character, by any means, but he did seem to thrive in moments of calm. For a moment, the spirit worried over whether a surprise party would please him in the first place.
“What about you?” Reigen asked suddenly. “When’s your birthday?”
Dimple gave him a crooked smile. “No clue. Nor the day I died. Feels like I’ve always been here.”
Some kind of sadly humored smile wavered over Reigen’s lips as he took a turn down an alleyway lined with wilting flowerpots and overhanging twines of laundry. “Are you happy about that?”
“Neutral,” Dimple shrugged, taking note of a fat cat watching them through a window. “For all the time I’ve spent wishing people would make a big fuss about me, the idea of them doing so for no reason more than my coming into existence seems silly.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Reigen stopped at the alley’s edge to let the spirit catch up, body lined by the sunshine beyond. He pulled his jacket off and threw it over a shoulder. “But it’s worth celebrating, I think. It’s less about existing at all and more… congratulating someone for sticking around as long as they have.”
Dimple searched his temperate gaze.
“Seems to me I’ve lost my right to a birthday, then, doesn’t it?” the spirit chuckled. “Considering I haven’t exactly succeeded in sticking around.”
Reigen smiled in a way that made his eyes crinkle.
Showed his age. It was nice.
“You’re still here in some form,” the man said with finality, “so it counts, in my opinion.”
They walked on, hiking up a slope that led into a canopied grove. A park at the highest point in the suburb, it seemed. Birds filled the air with their chatter.
“There were points I wasn’t sure I’d make it to thirty,” Reigen said, voice indecipherably softer than before.
“How does it feel?” Dimple asked.
“Same as twenty-nine.”
An old man walked by with a little golden dog, the color of a toasted marshmallow, on a leash. Reigen stopped to pet and coo, scratch circles around the pup’s cheeks. They wandered on.
“You strike me as a Gemini,” the conman stated once shadows overtook them beneath the trees. “Or an Aries. Maybe a Leo?”
Dimple laughed, but had nothing to contribute. Out of all the things he didn’t remember about his life, this fact seemed the least important.
The park at the top of the hill was quiet, housed a few crumbling stone shrines and a towering camphor tree, some benches settled in its roots. A path wound around the trunk; slowly, Reigen and Dimple made a round, breathing in the crisp air rich with autumn decay.
“Here’s an idea,” Reigen said, voice familiarly eager. “Your birthday can be October tenth, too.”
“You’re willing to share?” Dimple grinned.
“Sure. It’s more efficient this way, taking just one day between the two of us to celebrate. And even when Mob’s inevitably away for school and Serizawa’s moved on to--I don’t know, a real job--we can just… wander around. Go get ramen, see a movie. Or do whatever we want.
“But this is assuming you won’t eventually find greener pastures, too,” Reigen admitted, looking away with a hand ruffling the hair at the back of his head. “I don’t mean to suggest this is, like, it for you.”
Dimple watched him, the nervous twitch of his lips, and suddenly felt in part very sad and, in another part, very grateful. Almost violently so.
“I don’t mind this being it for me,” the spirit said, crossing his arms. “After all, I got my devotees. Um--friends. Whatever you want to call yourselves. I’m happy here.”
Right here.
Reigen’s smile spoke multitudes between the both of them.
“So… yeah. If it means stealing your thunder one day a year, today can be my birthday, too.”
Reigen beamed. “Friggin’ miracle a Libra like you could come to that decision so quickly,” he said.
Dimple laughed, gave his companion a flick to the temple. “Fuck off, Reigen.”
Their path eventually peeled from around the tree and back down into the neighborhoods below. The wind was picking up, blowing multicolored leaves around the big blue sky; Dimple realized he hadn’t a sense of the time. They couldn’t have been wandering about for more than twenty minutes at this point, right?
“So--it’s your birthday!” Reigen stated, putting his hands on his hips. “What do you want to do? Spur-of-the-moment trip to the sea?”
In all honesty, it sounded rather appealing. But Dimple remembered Shigeo, Serizawa, all the kids inevitably anticipating the shock on Reigen’s face when he found them crowding his office.
Reigen would be overjoyed.
“No, I… I think I’m good,” Dimple said quietly, scratching one red cheek.
“Let’s go somewhere fun to eat, then. My treat. Small ‘burb like this has gotta have something new,” Reigen smiled over the cityscape. The youthful jubilance in his face struck a stinging pang in Dimple’s heart. The surprise party. The cake and chips and candy.
“I, um--I appreciate it, but… maybe we can just hang around here a while longer.”
Reigen’s face just barely fell, and Dimple wanted to cry. “Really? Nothing?”
Dimple gave him a meager smirk. “Guess I’m not in the mood.”
He didn’t give Reigen another look but a glance at the corner of his eye, pretended not to see the somberness from before creep back into his face. God, how he wanted to fly into the conman’s arms and tell him what was waiting for him back in Seasoning City, how long they’d planned for this, how tiny and insignificant an effort it seemed to prove their love and appreciation for him.
But he didn’t say anything. Just floated beside Reigen, watched the sky.
“Dimple, do you remember when, during the case with Mogami, you told me I could stay with you if I died and didn’t pass on?”
Dimple blinked. He had said that, hadn’t he?
“Vaguely. I hope you haven’t been holding yourself to the assumption you won’t go to Heaven,” Dimple replied uncomfortably.
“No, no,” Reigen waved his words away. “Just—it comes back to me sometimes. Did you mean it, or was it just… offered in a moment of panic?”
“Both.” Dimple managed a half smile. “I was panicking.”
Reigen eyed him evenly, and sat down cross-legged on the stone wall siding the edge of the park boundary, feet dangling above the quiet street. “I just feel like I’m setting up a scenario here where you’re stuck with me, dead or alive, and I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
Dimple narrowed his eyes. Reigen kept his gaze on the horizon.
“Does it ever occur to you that people like spending time with you?”
Reigen looked up, smiled sheepishly. “Rarely.”
Dimple sighed, rolled his eyes up to the clouds. “Alright, listen. I’m about to say something, like, unforgivably corny. Completely out-of-character. And if you repeat this to anyone-- including me --I’m gonna kill you. Alright? This stays right here, ‘till the end of time,” the spirit snapped, pointing down at the stone wall on which Reigen perched.
“Message received.”
Dimple took a deep breath.
“You gave me a place,” he began. “I died, I lost all my memories, I started again from square one. The world of spirits isn’t welcoming; best you’ll find as far as loyalty goes is a gang or something. That’s all I had. And I wanted to come back to the living, because I didn’t feel like I was done , y’know? Anything I might’ve accomplished in life is lost, as far as I’m concerned. I had to make a mark again. The land of the living ain’t exactly keen on integrating ghosts back into the populous, and why should they? Those of us that stick around aren’t good enough to move on, and we lose what makes us human.”
Reigen furrowed his brow and poised to speak, but Dimple held up a hand, eyes resolutely shut.
“But you let me in anyway. You and Shigeo talked to me, and made a part of your lives, and… made me feel like I had one of my own again. Which is fucking weird, because without any memory of being alive, I shouldn’t remember what that feels like in the first place.
“My point is, you were willing to let in this… fucking asshole, let him stick around and find a home between the two of you, and--the least I can do to repay that is do the same when you end up on my side of the tracks. That’s what I want out of what extra time I’ve been given.”
Reigen had been watching Dimple through all this with a wry little smile. Finally, in the silence that followed, he spoke: “So you’ve downgraded from becoming God to looking after my dumb ass once I die?”
Scowling, Dimple replied, “yes.”
Reigen’s smile widened into a toothy grin. “ Really. ”
“Yes, really! You want me to fucking spell it out for you, Reigen?”
“That might help.”
Dimple hid his face in his hands. “I hate you. I hate you so much.” He pulled his palms away, stared at Reigen in the hopes he might burn a hole in his forehead. “I’m a masochistic idiot and I think spending eternity with you would be fun, for some reason. Sue me.”
Reigen laughed, and whatever genuine frustration Dimple might’ve harbored for him was gone. If getting Serizawa to laugh was a day-brightener, hearing Reigen give one of his rare, raw guffaws was like a gift.
For God’s sake, when had he gotten so soft?
“I think that’d be fun, too,” Reigen said. “But happens if I do pass on?”
Ha! As if Dimple hadn’t spent more than a few sleepless nights fretting over the very same thing. Feeling rather pleased with himself, the little spirit crossed his arms and proudly replied, “then I’ll have done my last bidding on this Earth, and I can come, too.”
Reigen laughed again. “So when you say eternity, you really mean eternity. I’m stunned, Dimple; I had no clue you liked me enough to submit to millenia of this stupid back-and-forth of ours.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Dimple muttered. “And anyways, I don’t like you. Publically, at least. But it’s an entertaining sort of antagonism.”
They both chuckled now, the sounds hidden behind fists.
“Can you imagine? Celebrating birthdays together until the end of time. What do ghost shindigs look like?”
“Mass hauntings, usually,” Dimple answered, “though I can’t imagine Shigeo wouldn’t be willing to plan us something fun, even in that state.”
Which reminded him of something fairly important.
“Um--what time is it, by the way?”
“Four-fifteen. Why?”
Shit, shit, shit. Dimple had to stay calm, figure out how he was gonna get Reigen back to the office. They were supposed to be walking in the office door in fifteen minutes. The train commute wasn’t long, but he worried that convincing Reigen to end this surreal episode of respite might be a more trying task.
“We, uh… we ought to start heading back, don’t you think?” the spirit uttered awkwardly, hating the way Reigen’s smile shrunk at his words. All the same, the conman nodded, let out a long sigh.
“As always, you’re the voice of reason,” Reigen said, hopping down from the stone wall and waiting for the spirit to follow. “Not feeling up to bumming around and being existential with me all evening?”
“There’s nothing I’d like more,” Dimple admitted, laughing softly, “but… prior commitments. Movie night with Shigeo and Ritsu.”
They were on the next train back into the city, the sun still just halfway down the brilliant sky.
“I needed this, I think,” Reigen said, leaning against the glass to admire the suburb disappearing back into the hills as the train rolled away. “Not that I’m opposed to going back to pretending we hate each other, if only for the sake of saving face, but…” he trailed off, looked down at the hands clasped in his lap.
Dimple fluttered downward to look Reigen in the eye.
“We’ve got all the time in the world to not hate each other,” the spirit told him. “So don’t go looking forward to things coming to an end for you anytime soon. How’s this weekend looking?”
“Pretty free.” Reigen raised his brows. “You?”
“Hoping to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to the sea, as it happens. But I suppose it’s not spur-of-the-moment if we plan it beforehand.”
Reigen laughed. Dimple had to fight the beam attempting to overtake his entire… well, everything. It didn’t work.
“It’s a date,” the conman promised. “Though I doubt your coworkers will be terribly pleased to learn we’ve left them behind.”
“Oh, they can come if they really want to. We’ll just have to keep up appearances,” Dimple replied.
Not that they had much success in keeping up appearances during the party, after Reigen had removed the cake from his face (and replaced it directly onto a laughing Shigeo’s). Dimple hardly found a free moment to do much more than watch Reigen consort with all the guests, exuberant and joyous in a way unlike that which he’d witnessed earlier. This happiness was bright and whip-quick, snapping Serizawa and Tome and Shigeo and all the other kids into his bubble of laughing and dancing over one another’s feet. It relieved Dimple, in a way, reaffirming that the conman could be happy without all this experiential supposition they’d done on their walk before.
But then there was something very warm, too, to the notion that a very specific sort of joy had been reserved for him. Dimple only caught another glimpse of it when the night had just begun to wind down, and they found themselves hanging back for a brief moment on the room’s periphery together.
“Could’ve had me fooled, Dimple.” There were still dashes of pink and white frosting on Reigen’s chin, in the sticky locks of his hair. “I’m assuming you were given the task of distracting me.”
“Wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be. And I kinda forgot what I was supposed to be doing while we were out--”
“Hence the sudden rush to get back to the office,” Reigen realized, chuckling. “I should’ve seen this coming, in retrospect--none of you have a particular knack for subtlety. But I didn’t… I just couldn’t imagine, especially not, like, this time last year. Even now, I can hardly fathom. All this hubbub for me, of all people.”
“And me,” Dimple tacked on snarkily. Reigen chuckled, nodded in agreement. “Like you said, it’s not just your existence at face value we’re celebrating. From what I can see, it’s more like gratitude. Not congratulations for your perseverance, but... thanks, if anything. For using your time thus far to wheedle your way into all these peoples’ lives.”
Reigen looked down at the floor, apple cheeks rosy and round at either end of his pleased smile. Finally, he looked back up at the spirit, eyes glittering with fondness.
“Happy birthday, Dimple,” he said.
Dimple snickered before allowing himself to lose face, match the man’s expression of appreciation. In a voice quiet enough to save from the rest of the room: “Happy birthday, Reigen.”