Work Text:
When Shigeo walks in the door of Spirits and Such Consultation Office that evening, he sees Reigen standing on top of his swivel chair. The man looks disheveled and nervous, his eyes fixed on something on the floor behind his desk.
“Shishou,” Shigeo begins carefully, setting his bag down, “what are you doing?”
Reigen startles and looks up, relief washing over his sweaty face. He almost slips and falls when the sudden movement jolts the chair. “Mob! Oh, thank goodness, you're here. I didn’t want to call you in early, so I--”
“What’s going on?”
“Come here. I need--I need a favor from you. Please. I, uh… I’ve been up here for a while.”
As Shigeo approaches, his shoulders tense and nerves on edge, the source of Reigen’s fear comes into view--a spider. A small one, likely not harmful, crawling around the floor.
He should have seen it coming, but Shigeo lets out a relieved breath anyway.
“Hey! Don’t sigh like that!” Reigen shouts, his voice high, breathy, and panicked. “Look at it! It’s terrifying!” Shigeo glances at the spider as it starts crawling up the side of the desk. Reigen shrieks. “Kill it! No, don’t kill it--I don’t know! Get rid of it! Please!”
Shigeo grabs a sheet of printer paper and a cup from the water cooler. Within a minute, the spider is gone from Spirits and Such, likely to never return again.
“It’s gone,” Shigeo says as he closes the window. Reigen lets out a loud sigh, his whole body physically relaxing as he plops down in his chair.
“You’re a life-saver, Mob.” Reigen wipes his sweaty face with his sleeve, still working to get his panicked breathing under control.
“Why are you so afraid of bugs, Shishou? It seems like you get really worked up over nothing.”
“Bugs are not nothing. They’re awful, horrible, and creepy-crawly.”
“You’ve never tried to get over your fear?”
“Well, maybe once or twice, I don’t know. They’re just too creepy for me.”
“Even though it’s irrational?”
Reigen looks at Shigeo with one eyebrow cocked. “Hey, what's that supposed to m--?”
Shigeo returns his gaze with a purely serious look.
Ah. This must be something he’s thought about before, then. Reigen leans forward on his elbows, twiddling his thumbs as he decides what to say next. Shigeo watches him expectantly. Reigen eventually sighs, dropping both hands onto his desk.
“I gotta admit, Mob, I’m not the best person to be asking about this,” he says with a tired laugh. “I’ve been afraid of bugs my whole life, and I’ve yet to get over it.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yeah, it’d be nice not to have to stand on a chair for thirty minutes every time I see a spider.”
Shigeo’s serious expression falters, humming amusedly. “Do you always have to face your fears?”
“Why do you ask?”
The boy’s expression falls grim again. He looks away, sitting down in his chair and taking his homework out of his bag. “No reason.”
“You know you can talk to me, Mob. Are you afraid of something?”
After a long silence, he replies, “Yes.”
Reigen shrugs, twirling his hand in a circle. “There’s no shame in that, Mob. Everyone’s afraid of something. Heights, the dark, dentists… bugs.” Before the boy could answer, the office phone rings. Reigen clears his throat and straightens his tie before picking up the receiver. “Thank you for calling Spirits and Such Consultation Office! How may we-- Wha? Oh, yes, we take walk-ins.”
As the man rattles on about spirits and potential courses, Shigeo opens his textbook, thinking about the conversation he had with his master before they got interrupted by a client.
“It would really be best to have a consultation with you before we--What? No.”
Shigeo thinks while the man gesticulates wildly on the phone. It comforts him a little to know that his master has an irrational fear, too. Tome had teased him (playfully, of course) earlier when he’d been hesitant to go dive into the closet of the club room to retrieve some dumbbells for the Body Improvement Club’s activity.
“There’s no monsters in the closet, Mob,” she’d snickered. “What, are you claustrophobic?”
“Yeah.”
Her face fell blank. “Oh.”
He doesn’t mind that his peers know his fear, but a part of him doesn’t want his master to know. Reigen is so cool--he wouldn’t understand why Shigeo would have such a childish fear. It comforts him a little that Reigen has a fear too--but his is understandable.
Bugs are awful, horrible, and creepy-crawly, after all.
Reigen looked annoyed as he listened to the client over the phone. Shigeo could distantly hear her voice--she sounded frantic. She was yelling and talking quickly, going on about a spirit in her apartment.
“Well, like I said before, we have three courses--”
Shigeo hears the woman say, “Whatever the most expensive one is. I want this spirit gone as soon as possible.”
“Oh. Well, of course! I’ll have to add on a same-day fee…” Reigen puts a hand on his hip. Shigeo watches him intently--Reigen is always so charismatic when it comes to business.
“Whatever you need. Just please get this ghost out of here!”
“Don’t worry,” Reigen says, a business-like smile widening on his face despite the fact that the customer can’t see him, “You came to the right place. I, Reigen Arataka, the greatest psychic of the 21st century, accept this challenge! I will--uh, where did you say your apartment was again? ...Right! We’ll be there as soon as possible.”
He slams the phone down a bit too roughly and turns to Shigeo with a wide smile. “Get ready to go, Mob! We have a client waiting!”
“We don’t usually do jobs without meeting first,” Shigeo wonders aloud.
Reigen dismisses his thought with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about that. Anything for our clients! Now, let’s go!”
--
PROGRESS TOWARD MOB’S EXPLOSION: 35%
--
The woman’s apartment is in a state of disaster.
“Thank you so much for coming on such short notice, Reigen-san,” she says, cupping her shaking hands together, “As you can see, it was urgent.”
Her furniture is upturned, picture frames broken on the ground, her belongings scattered all over the floor. This spirit is angry, Shigeo notes. It feels powerful. He wonders what could have happened to it that it felt so vengeful. Why did it destroy this poor woman’s apartment?
“No problem at all, Yamamoto-sama. I understand. We’ll locate this spirit and exorcise it in no time,” Reigen says, the business smile plastered on his face falling into a scowl. “This energy… it’s so strong!”
“Yes,” Shigeo agreed. “There’s just one, but it’s powerful.”
Reigen’s face shifted to an expression of unease for just a moment.
“Oh, dear,” Yamamoto mutters, wringing her hands. “Can you get rid of it?”
Reigen stands tall. “Of course! You have nothing to fear. Why don’t you go out for a night on the town? Give us some time to clear out the spirit. When you get back, your apartment will be back to normal.”
As she sputters thank yous, Reigen all but pushes the woman out of the door.
“Is it really that powerful, Mob?” he asks as he ensures the door is latched and Yamamoto down the hall.
Shigeo nods, examining the apartment. “It’s angry, too. I wonder if Yamamoto had anything to do with it.”
“She said she suspected it was the ghost of a tenant that used to live here,” Reigen replies, his brow furrowed as he picks up one of the chairs on its side. “Let’s just find this spirit and exorcise it, Mob. This place is giving me the creeps.”
“I don’t see any bugs, Shishou.”
“A different type of creeps.”
“It’s close,” Shigeo says after a moment, raising his hand, palm-out, in front of him. “But it won’t show itself.”
A coffee table, from the floor, flies towards them. Reigen puts his arms in front of his face as Shigeo blocks its path with a barrier around the two of them. Shigeo can sense the spirit--it’s right in front of him, but it’s...invisible?
“Mob,” Reigen whispers sharply. “What are you waiting for?”
“I can’t see it.”
“What do you mean you can’t see it?!”
Another flying object--a picture frame, this time--flies toward the barrier. Shigeo moves closer to Reigen, who looks around, trying to formulate a plan.
“Shishou, I need to lower my barrier,” Shigeo says, and Reigen nods, needing no further explanation. He waits for the boy’s signal, then leaps to hide behind one of the upturned couches.
Shigeo holds his hand out in front of him, and Reigen watches as his posture slowly melted in confusion. He watches as...
“Mob, look out--!”
The boy brings up a barrier just in time for a lamp to crash into it. He finds an upturned loveseat, crouches behind it, and removes his barrier.
They look at each other from across the living room, Reigen’s face scrunched in confusion. “Why are we hiding? This seems kind of counterproductive!”
Shigeo doesn’t respond, opting instead to begin slowly rising on his feet. Reigen watches, trying to figure out what the hell the kid is doing--when Shigeo turns a complete 180 with his hand outstretched, prepared to finally exorcise this elusive spirit. After a moment of looking around, he slumps in defeat, crouching back down behind the loveseat.
His expression, though still mostly blank and Mob-like, shifts to one of deep contemplation: his brow slightly furrowed and his chin resting on his fist.
(Reigen, over the years, has had to learn how to read his expressions--the kid is subtle. If you’re not looking closely, it’s like he never emotes. Reigen, though, he can tell. He’s gotten quite good at it, if he does say so himself.)
“Mob,” Reigen whisper-shouts. He’s not sure why. The spirit can still definitely hear them. He can tell, because she throws another lamp. “What are you doing? What’s the plan?”
The boy waits a moment before answering, quietly. “She appears when she thinks we can’t see her.”
“How do you know?”
“When I stood up, I could see her for a split second before she disappeared.”
“But you can’t exorcise her unless--”
“Yes. We need to…” He trails off, looking around. We need to find a place that we can see her but she can’t see us. Reigen joins him in searching, and his eyes almost immediately focus on a pair of doors.
“Mob! I think I got something!” Without a second thought, Reigen makes a run for it, grabbing Shigeo along the way. He swings open one of the closet doors, pushes Shigeo inside, and closes the doors behind them. “Look! The doors have little slits in them. You’ll be able to see out of them, but she won’t be able to see us from the outside.”
Shigeo goes still. There isn’t much light inside the closet, but Reigen can see enough to have a feeling something’s off. Very off. The boy’s shoulders are tense, his eyes wide. His hair begins to float up off of his forehead and his breath comes in short gasps.
60%
Reigen’s heart skips a beat. This isn’t a Shigeo expression--this is an expression of pure fear. “Mob? Hey, Mob, what’s wrong?”
“Tight,” Shigeo mutters, his pupils darting in all directions. “Tight.”
“Tight?” Reigen echoes, putting a hand on Shigeo’s shoulder--which is apparently a bad idea. Shigeo lets out a shuddering gasp at the contact, shrugging it off and backing away until his back touches the wall of the closet. “Mob? What’s the matter?”
“Walls. Tight."
78%
Reigen feels his heart fall into his chest as the realization sinks in. Shigeo is claustrophobic, severely, it seemed, and he’d just shut the two of them in a tiny, dark closet.
The boy’s hair stands on end, floating as if caught in a windstorm. He trembles, making himself small, curling in on himself, as if that would make the closet bigger. His eyes are wide, looking everywhere but at Reigen.
“Oi, M-Mob, it’s alright. It’s going to be alright. Listen, hey, look at me,” Reigen stares at Shigeo until he looks him directly in the eye, careful not to touch him again. “Look, I can just open this door and we’ll be out, you see? We’re not trapped.” He makes a show of opening the closet door a crack and then closing it. Shigeo takes a long, shuddering breath in, and then out. Reigen nodded and continued, “But I need you to exorcise that spirit for me, first. It’s right outside that door. Once you do, we can leave, alright?”
Shigeo squeezes his eyes shut so hard he sees static, but he nods nonetheless. He hears Reigen sigh.
“Mob,” he says, making sure his voice comes out commanding and strict. “Face your fears. Right? Isn’t that what you--”
“I can’t,” Shigeo mutters, trembling violently.
95%
“Mob, breathe. Okay? Breathe with me. It’s okay,” Reigen tries. Shigeo takes one single deep breath in but lets it out with a short sob.
Reigen feels something squeeze in his chest. He looks down, unsure of what to say to make the boy feel better. He spots a dead beetle on the floor of the closet and feels a squeamish chill run up his spine. And then he thinks.
Shigeo whines, crossing his arms over his head.
Reigen can’t take this anymore. He isn’t going to torture this boy just to get the job done. They are going to find another way. He opens the closet door, pulling Shigeo with him by his hand, settling behind a barricade of furniture before the spirit could hurt them. Shigeo takes a gasping breath in once they’re out in the open. His eyes aren’t nearly as wide anymore, and he seems much more composed than he did just moments ago.
Reigen lets out a sigh of relief.
Shigeo looks up at his master, who has his arm hovering in front of him. It takes him a moment, but he realizes eventually that Reigen is waiting for permission to touch him again. He nods, leaning into the touch when it comes.
“Mob, I’m sorry,” Reigen sighs, squeezing the boy’s shoulder. “I should have known.”
Shigeo shakes his head, looking down at the floor. His brow furrows further and the edges of his lips pull themselves into a frown. Reigen sighs softly. He’s ashamed. That must be why this was bothering him so much.
“It’s okay, Shishou. I never told you.”
“Yeah, but--” A vase flies over their heads and shatters against the wall. Reigen looks annoyed, sitting back against the underside of Yamamoto’s couch. “If I get interrupted by another piece of flying furniture, I’m going to riot.”
“What should we do about the spirit?”
Reigen notes the change of subject but decides not to press. “Well, we’re not going back in that closet, so we just have to find something else…”
Shigeo looks like he wanted to protest, but stops. He’s quietly thankful that he doesn’t have to go back in there. Reigen sighs again, giving the boy’s shoulder one last squeeze before he scans the apartment for another place to hide where Shigeo would still be able to see the spirit.
“Shishou.”
“What is it, Mob?”
“Look,” Shigeo whispers, his hands on a torn-off piece of mesh from the underside of the couch. Reigen, slightly confused, crouches to the boy’s level and looks through the tear, gasping in delight.
He can’t see the spirit, but debris floats around an invisible figure in the middle of the room. Every so often, something darts away from the floating cloud of dangerous flying objects, smashing against the wall or the barricade of furniture. Reigen might not be able to see a spirit there, but Shigeo definitely can.
He crouches out of the way so that his student can peer through, watching as the boy raises his hand slowly--and then as a gust of wind blows throughout the entire apartment and the flying furniture crashes to the ground.
The spirit is gone.
Reigen lets out a loud sigh of relief, feeling all the tension seep out of his muscles. The two of them physically relax, leaning against the underside of the couch, reveling in the silence of the spirit-free apartment. They stay like that for a long moment. Shigeo is the first to stand, dusting himself off before offering a hand to Reigen. With the way the light from the windows shines on his face then, Reigen can see the dried tear streaks on his cheeks. He sighs and allowed Shigeo to pull him up.
“Good work, Mob,” Reigen says, allowing the relief and pride to spread a smile across his face.
“Thank you, Shishou,” Shigeo returns the smile, though it was a much smaller and shier one. Reigen doesn’t mind. He ruffles the kid’s hair, smiling wider at the scrunched-up face Shigeo makes while fixing it.
And then he scans the apartment.
It’s in an even bigger state of disarray than it was when they arrived.
“Well,” Reigen says, clapping his hands together. “Are you up for some cleaning?”
Shigeo nods, but as more time passes it becomes more evident that he really wasn’t. His movements are sluggish and clumsy as dark circles form under his still-puffy eyes. Reigen keeps Shigeo in his line of sight. The boy never exploded, he noted--his emotions are still teetering on a very unbalanced scale. Even though the boy is calm now, Reigen doesn’t want to stress him out any more and risk an outburst of power in Yamamoto’s already-disastrous apartment. So they take it slow, and they don’t worry about a thing.
When Yamamoto returns, they are nowhere near done clearing the debris and returning her apartment back to normal.
“Oh, you two don’t need to do that,” she says with a laugh. “You’ve done more than enough for me already. I can finally sleep in peace! Thank you so much, Reigen-san.”
“No problem at all, Yamamoto-sama,” Reigen lies.
--
PROGRESS TOWARD MOB’S EXPLOSION: 97%
--
The sun is beginning to set when Reigen and Shigeo make it back to the office. The walk back had taken almost twice as long than it did on the way there, and Shigeo looks like he ready to fall asleep where he stands.
“Why don’t we close up early tonight?” Reigen says softly, taking a stack of papers and tapping them on his desk to straighten them out.
“Are you sure?” Shigeo mumbles, rubbing his eyes.
Reigen shrugs. “Yeah, why not? Yamamoto-sama was quite… generous, and I got some clients while you were at school today. No worries.”
“If you say so,” Shigeo yawns.
Shigeo moves to grab the broom from its normal resting place against the wall near the door to the kitchen but stops when his eyes rested on the wallpaper, broom nowhere to be seen.
“Shishou, where’s the broom?” Shigeo asks, spinning around tiredly. Reigen looks up from his rummaging through the cabinet, thinking for a moment before beginning to laugh nervously.
“I’ll get it for you, Mob,” Reigen says with a breathy chuckle and scrambles frantically out of his chair and towards the broom closet. He forgot he put the broom back in there after vacuuming one night earlier this week.
“Shishou…”
Reigen freezes in his tracks, softening his posture a little. “Yeah?”
“It’s okay. That closet doesn’t bother me.”
“Ah,” Reigen can’t help but let out another chuckle. “Sorry, Mob. I just--I… didn’t want to--for you to, uh…”
Shigeo’s face shifts into something indescribable. For a split second, he looks sad. Defeated. Reigen feels a pang of guilt stab through his chest. Shigeo stares down at the floor, playing with his sleeve. “Sorry, Shishou. I didn’t mean to almost lose control.”
“Mob, no, I-- That’s not what I meant, I--” Reigen stumbles over his words. Shigeo looks up at him expectantly, his mouth threatening to fall into a frown. Oh, jeez. Time for me to be an adult, then. “Mob. You shouldn’t blame yourself for being afraid. Phobias are horrible, but they’re normal, and you don’t need to be ashamed of it.”
“You don’t think I’m childish?”
“What? Of course not! Why would I think that?”
Shigeo shifts his weight between his feet.
“You’re allowed to be afraid, Mob,” Reigen crouches on one knee in front of the boy, putting a hand on his tense shoulder. “Don’t think for a second that I would look down on you for that.”
There’s a long moment full of silence. And then a sniff. Then two. Shigeo’s tears flow, and the boy trembles, but Reigen isn’t fearful. He wraps his arms around his student, rubbing small circles on his back, and Shigeo returns the hug with hitching breaths.
“Shh, it’s alright, Mob,” Reigen murmurs, his voice low and smooth. “I’ve got you.”
100% RELIEF
“I’ve got you.”