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Mob’s eyes open.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table, but he has no idea how he’s gotten there. He’s not particularly concerned for some reason. The questions fade away to the back of his mind as he looks around at the clean, sparse kitchen. The walls are white, the floors are clean-
His legs are not yet long enough to reach the kitchen floor.
He wriggles his legs a bit and swings them back and forth. It is a strange feeling, the lack of the floor beneath his socked feet, but he doesn’t mind. He isn’t sure why he remembers the feeling of feet touching the ground. He is always the shortest between him and Ritsu, even though he is older than Ritsu by a year.
He wonders where his mom and dad are. They usually are the ones to bring him to elementary school, but they aren’t at the table, and from the sun outside, it looks like it’s late in the morning.
A glass of milk sits in front of Mob. The rays from the sun are streaming through the window. They glance off the crystal glass of his drink, giving the white of his milk an ethereal glow.
He wraps a few fingers around the glass, and his fingers seem to have shrunk as well. He swears he remembers his fingers wrapping all the way around his drink, but now an empty gap splits his fingers apart, creating a chasm between his fingers that doesn’t feel right.
He puts down the milk, feeling a little strange.
The door creaks open.
Mob half-expects his parents to appear, but there’s only one shadow on the ground. The shadow is much too short to be his mom or dad. He looks up and Ritsu is already sliding across from him from the breakfast table.
Mob draws in a short breath.
Ritsu’s face is strangely younger, rounder. His dark eyes are bright.
Then Ritsu starts rambling.
Mob’s world freezes.
Words fly out of Ritsu’s mouth as Ritsu mindlessly chatters about his day across the breakfast table. His hands are energetic, waving throughout the air with unrestrained energy. He’s talking about his friends at the soccer field, the math equations he learned during math, the cute cat he bent down to pet yesterday.
The words from Ritsu’s wobbles and blurs. The milk, the table, the sunlight, all of the things in the kitchen collapses until only Ritsu’s face is in sharp focus. Mob can only see the smile dangling on Ritsu’s face, small and precious, and a sharp ache splits his chest apart because Mob hasn’t seen this smile in more than three years.
Three years?
“Nii-san? Are you okay?”
Ritsu’s hands stop flapping about. Mob notices that his eyes are fixated on Mob’s still-full glass of milk. “You haven’t touched your milk yet.”
Mob tries to make a noncommittal sound but it wavers in his throat. He’s feeling suddenly shaky. Something in his chest has shattered into a billion pieces, jagged jigsaw pieces that won’t slot into their proper places, no matter how hard he’s trying to shove them into neat little rows.
Something is off.
But Ritsu is so happy and Mob wants things to stay the same. If the facade is shattered, Mob instinctively knows that Ritsu’s smile will disappear. But his voice sticks in his throat, and he can’t say anything.
Ritsu’s eyes travel from the full glass of milk, sliding up onto Mob’s face. They widen.
“Nii-san?”
Mob passes a hand over his face and oh. His hand comes away wet and he blinks again and the blurry world clears a tiny bit more.
He turns his head away, avoiding Ritsu’s wide-eyed gaze, feeling a muted feeling of panic bubble up into his chest. He’s the older brother, yet he’s the one at the breakfast table with water dripping down his chin. Everything is normal, it has to be normal, but Ritsu’s reaching out a hand and Mob’s pushing his chair back with a nasty screech -
“Tell me what’s going on,” Ritsu pleads. “You’ve been looking at me weird this whole morning. Did something happen?”
Mob’s heart’s pounding too fast. His breaths are short and stunted like he’s drowning. He feels like he’s drowning.
“I’m not feeling too good,” he manages. He nearly topples the chair over as he suddenly stands up. “I’m going back to my room.”
The entire table is trembling. The spoons on the table are twisting and untwisting, like writhing, silver snakes; the glasses of milk are bobbing up and down; the napkins are folding themselves into neat little squares, slowly folding themselves out of existence.
All the objects are surrounded by a wash of blue, purple, white glittering colors flashing in the light. It would be pretty if it wasn’t so terrifying, and the lights are flashing in the room, going on and off, on and off.
The panic is growing inside of Mob’s chest. He’s trying to shove them inside a tiny box, but for some reason, he can’t control his feelings, like a dam inside of his heart has broken and all he can do is stay afloat in the rush of water and terror and…
-desire, bittersweetness, longing-
He misses Ritsu’s smile. He can’t ruin this, doesn’t want this reality to dissolve. He chances a look at Ritsu again, amongst the floating silverware and plates and flashing lights.
The younger version of Ritsu is gone.
Ritsu’s face is older, no longer bright-eyed. Only a painfully familiar blankness remains, layers of masks that peel off every time the front layer twists itself into an emotion vaguely resembling something. Even though Ritsu’s hand is still held out to Mob, his eyes are fixated on the floating objects around them.
Even someone like Mob can recognize the fear flashing through his eyes before the smooth blankness covers his face again.
“Nii-san?” Ritsu’s voice has turned hollow. He pulls back his hand and rests it on the table, knuckles white, fingers clenched. “Can you… erm, please set the table back to normal?”
Mob doesn’t realize he’s shaking until his arm bangs against the table. He forcefully tries to reign in his powers, but they aren’t working as they should have, and the objects only spin faster, flying higher, and everything is out of his control.
Something black is creeping up his arm.
A jumbled mess of scribbles drips evil onto the ground and the chairs shatter like glass, wooden splinters exploding everywhere, and Ritsu’s scrambling against the wall, eyes fearful and large, and Mob tries hiding his arm under the table but the words just erode the wood of the table, leaking out like oil spreading across water.
“Please stop.” The words come out of Ritsu’s mouth like a dry sob, cracked and broken.
Any pretense of normalcy is gone as Mob helplessly watches the black scribbles climb higher and higher up his body. There is wind inside of the kitchen now, blowing papers from desks, leaves from potted plants, hoodies and t-shirts…
The last thing Mob sees before the blackness consumes him is Ritsu’s eyes, so so very scared.
Mob opens his eyes.
This time, he’s lying on the ratty couch in the living room. The TV screen is still on, showing pictures of little men fighting one another, ridiculous pew-pew sounds in the background. It’s a show from America, filled with unrealistically bright red blood splatters and dramatic groans.
It immediately makes Mob feel sick.
“You were having a bad dream.” Ritsu’s laying on the couch, feet propped up on the armrest. His head is raised as he looks at Mob, spiky black hair reflecting the light from the constantly flashing TV screen.
Mob remembers when they used to watch TV with their limbs entangled with each other. It makes the distance between them seem even bigger like a large spirit has somehow suffocated the rest of the air in the room.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
Ritsu’s face twists before lying flat again. “Nothing to be sorry about. But you have to stop haunting the blankets.”
He gestures to the floating blankets around the room.
Mob opens his mouth to say sorry again but thinks better of it when Ritsu glares back. He transforms his apology into some sort of grocery shopping list inside of his head- milk, eggs, instant ramen because neither of them can cook -and pretends that the apology never existed. And then mentally throws away the grocery list because he has no idea why he decided to make one in the first place.
Concentrating on the floating blankets, he closes his eyes.
He extends an arm into the air and reaches inside of his brain to shove his feelings into a small, imaginary box. This time his feelings shudder under his will. The blue glow surrounding the blankets wink out, and gravity pulls the blankets down to where they belong.
Ritsu gives a cursory nod.
Then, that’s it.
Mob sits there, half-covered by a blanket and still shaky. Ritsu has turned back to watch the show. The TV screen in the background flashes more images of war. There is a woman now who’s kissing a soldier, then suddenly the tell-tale glint of metal flashes on the screen.
She then kills them all in the next couple of minutes with flashy gunfire and even more bright red fake blood as Mob and Ritsu sit in silence… or at least, as much silence there is while watching someone get stabbed every minute.
He instinctively glances at Ritsu, who’s staring impassively at the screen. His arms are crossed over each other, making him look more mature.
Mob swallows. It's not too strange. Ritsu is back to being Ritsu. There’s a careful, worried crease of his brow, a tint of tightness in his eyes, but as usual, his face is blank and empty.
His heart squeezes within itself. He opens his mouth without thinking.
“Ritsu?”
Ritsu glances over to him, neutral. “Hmm?”
The words die in Mob’s throat.
Mob knows that he doesn’t notice many things. But he knows the faces of the people he most treasures-the Bodybuilding Club. Reigen. Ritsu.
He knows the difference between the fake smile sitting on Ritsu’s face and his true smile, small and bright. But he also knows that it isn’t in his power, not anymore, to make Ritsu truly smile again.
Another thing that his power can’t do.
Mob ignores the lump in his throat rising and shakes his head at Ritsu, who is still staring at him curiously.
“Nothing. It’s nothing at all,” he says quietly, sinking further into his blankets.