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In and out. The job is supposed to be in and out, out and in. Nevertheless, Reigen is perched at the hood of a smoking car, phone tucked into the crook of his neck, and wondering why he even bothers anymore.
His hands are sweating profusely, forcing him to take them out of his pockets and cross his arms instead. He isn’t sure what to do with them. Usually, there’s someone to pose for—a suspicious client, a helpless child, an attractive woman on the street—but now it is only him and Mob. The middle schooler is standing a few feet away at the moment, back facing him. He’s staring at something in the distance, and Reigen follows his gaze but can’t discern anything beyond sky and sand.
A bead of sweat trails down his neck and he is reminded, suddenly, of the person on the other end of the phone call.
“Mr. Reigen? Are you still there?”
“Yep, still here!” He finger guns the empty street, then grimaces. “S-so, how’s it lookin’, huh? Thirty minutes tops? I’ll put in a little extra if you make it fifteen. Maybe even offer a discount on any future visits to my business—”
“Mr. Reigen, sir. I’m not sure you understand. We won’t be able to provide any assistance until the end of the day.” The bodiless voice—female with an English accent—emerges from his phone speakers all grainy and strange, as if from an old television. When he remains silent, unable to think of a response quick enough (an occurrence of which comes far and few), she continues, “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, sir. I can try to provide you with the nearest rest stop if you’d like, though that may be a little difficult considering your location.”
A location which Reigen still cannot not discern, at least in specific terms. Desert , apparently, isn’t very helpful. Nor is flat, straight road. He is starting to dislike America more and more. “You’re really, really sure about that? Because—”
“Yes, Mr. Reigen. We’re sure.”
He glances over to Mob and frowns. The boy is crouched down with his head propped on his knees. He hurries to close the conversation. “Well, uh, it’s all good then. No biggie! My student and I will find a way to get around just fine. Thanks for the assistance, Miss Lady.”
“Of course.” A note of hesitance there, but Reigen is already heading toward Mob and her voice is far away, barely noticeable. “If that’s all—”
“Yep, you got it!” He pockets his phone and draws to a stop beside the boy. They remain there in silence for a few moments. Mob has tucked his face into the crooks of his elbows, seemingly unaware of Reigen’s presence.
Reigen wipes his hands against his thighs.
“You alright, Mob?”
“Oh, shishou.” A slight shift from below him as the boy reveals his face: sweaty and flushed, eyes half-lidded yet shining. “I’m okay. Are we going to walk now?”
It takes him longer than he’d like to admit to register the words. “Nah, of course not, silly.” There is no significant change in Mob’s expression, but Reigen’s known him long enough to recognize his subdued skepticism. “Okay, okay, you got me. Apparently, they’re all busy over there at the car agency thing, so we may have to do some walking. Only a bit, though! Don’t want you passing out on me or anything.”
Mob frowns. “Shishou, you look a little red.”
“I’m just peachy, Mob. Don’t worry about it.” Really—he’s hot, and tired, and a little ticked off about the whole situation. Nothing a couple hours’ stroll can’t fix. “Well, hah. We’d better get a move on before it gets dark!” Because the last thing they want is for the two of them to be stuck camping out in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than Reigen’s meager supplies and Mob’s backpack full of milk cartons, of all things.
There isn’t anything for Mob to do but nod and follow, but he’s used to that anyway. Before long, the two of them have faded along the side of the road.
—
They find a motel on the outskirts of some ratty suburbs. There’s only one room left—according to the well-endowed receptionist, the town’s a western staple—and Reigen books it, a bit desperately, for a couple of nights. Not because they’re staying there for the full three nights, he tells Mob, but because they’re gearing up for a five-star luxury by the end of the week, and so they need to save all the money they can. Which, naturally, equates to reduced wages for Mob.
“It’s an easy job,” Reigen reassures him as they’re unloading their things onto their respective, twin-sized beds. He moves to sit on the comforter and stops himself upon noticing a distinct, mud-colored stain on its surface. Mob is staring at him expectantly; he reaches for a smile and manages a grimace. “In and out, remember? Simple as that.”
Except they’ve run out of hot water and Reigen’s forgotten to pack extra socks and there are no ramen shops in any direction for at least a thousand miles. His hands are sweating so much he thinks the room would sooner become a river than a hospitable living space.
The car breaking down had been a klaxon of sorts , he thinks. America has ensnared them in its prodigious capitalist grip. Tome would be disappointed.
In the end, the two of them wander over to a greasy hellhole a couple yards down from the motel. Reigen orders a sandwich, then a second one for Mob. The sandwich is overpriced, too, but the waiter is pure, chiseled muscle and the conman thinks, wisely, that his money will be put to waste every which way he turns, so he keeps his mouth shut. More importantly, Mob is still listless, even when placed directly underneath the air conditioner vents. The boy swallows down a quarter of his sandwich, then stops to pick at his shirt. A new shirt: neon and obnoxious and worth every penny. It is emblazoned with ‘trust me, I’m psychic’ in blocky orange text. Reigen has to bite back a grin every time he catches a glimpse of it.
“Shishou?”
“Yes, Mob?”
“When are we going to meet the client?”
Reigen pauses mid-bite. He studies the middle schooler with his eyebrows raised. “Well, now, let’s not jump the gun and the bullet.” It’s an American expression stolen from two colorful stragglers at a bus stop, and he’s sure he’s misused it, but he forges on anyway. “We’ll meet them soon enough, Mob. We’re just going to take these couple of days for… relaxation training.”
A small crease appears on Mob’s forehead. “Relaxation…?”
“Relaxation training! It’s a vital part of maintaining spiritual health. Tell me you remember spiritual health, Mob.” When the boy shakes his head, cheeks pink, Reigen sighs lightly. “Whether you’re going all willy-nilly with your powers or just going out for a bite—like we’re doing right now—you’re using different parts of your spiritual health. You’ve gotta give it a few days to… recharge , so you don’t get all worn out and cranky. Hence, relaxation training.”
He takes a prolonged sip from his lemonade, then adds, “You’ll understand all of this better when you’re more experienced, though. Give it a few years.”
There’s a soft gleam in Mob’s eyes when Reigen looks at him again. “Okay. I understand.”
“You’re a quick learner,” Reigen replies. He clears his throat; clears it a second time. His heart seems to have escaped via esophagus—he must be coughing it up. “Ah, heh. Well, if you’re about finished with your sandwich, we might as well turn in for the night. We’ve got a big couple of relaxation days ahead of us, so I need you on your A-game.” As always, of course.
—
Mob nearly implodes their room in the middle of the night. Thankfully, Reigen is still awake.
They sit side-by-side on Mob’s bed, nursing watery hot chocolates. There’s a towel over the boy’s head; Reigen isn’t sure when it’d gotten there, but he suspects its presence has something to do with the fact that he can no longer make out Mob’s face with a layer of white cotton in the way. The towel is redundant, though. Neither of them have bothered to turn on any lights, and Reigen suspects that reaching over the boy to tug on the lamp string would strain the delicacy of the moment.
Surprisingly, it is Mob that speaks first. “Do you dream a lot, shishou?”
A brief moment of clarity arrives. Nightmares, Reigen thinks. Mob has nightmares. “Sure, I do. All the time. You?”
Mob shrinks, and the towel shifts, brushing Reigen’s knee. “Yes. Frequently.”
He offers nothing more.
“Dreams are fickle things, Mob,” Reigen says. His tone edges between cautious and conversational. It’s a tricky balance. “And… a lot of times, they can be overwhelming.”
“They bother me,” Mob mumbles.
“Of course they do. I’d be bothered, too, if I was waking up all the time. But dreams serve a purpose, you know? They’re kind of—a kind of way for your brain to digest things, upsetting things, so that you aren’t—” Reigen pauses. The hot chocolate seems frigid in his hands. “Mob…. what is it, exactly, that you’re dreaming about?”
The room stills. It is then that Reigen realizes his feet are no longer on the ground—all the furniture has shifted five inches up and into open air.
He never gets an answer.
—
He never gets an answer, but he wakes up tangled in his sheets with only one leg on the bed the next morning and thinks: We should do something about that. Let’s do something.
“The beach,” Mob repeats a few minutes later. He hums, then returns his attention to his cup ramen. “Is the client there?”
Reigen slouches. “No, the client isn’t there. I meant, you know. For relaxation training. To get the funk out of our systems.”
“I’m… I don’t understand.”
“You will understand, though,” Reigen insists, refusing to let up. He begins pacing around the room, ignoring Mob’s obvious apathy; every time the boy dips his head to get another mouthful of noodles, Reigen pivots on his heel, spinning in the other direction. “That’s the great thing about the beach, Mob. You can practically do anything there. Like, for instance, wonderful relaxation training. The beach and relaxation training go together like—like bread and butter. But there’s a whole array of other things you can do, like building sandcastles and frisbee and—”
“I can’t swim.”
“—beach volleyball and you can’t swim?” Reigen whirls back around to face the boy, paling. Mob nods. Reigen sputters, trying to save face. All of the feeling in his legs has disappeared, suddenly. “Uh, well, you don’t have to swim at the ocean. A lot of people don’t. I don’t. Dimple doesn’t.”
“Where is Dimple, by the way?”
“Not important. The point is, we’re going to the beach today, so you’d better get dressed.”
—
The fifteen-minute walk transforms into a thirty-minute stroll when Mob gets sidetracked by a line of tent shops bordering the local elementary school. He appears to be looking for something in particular; considering how intensely he’s scouring each tent, he’s bound to burn a hole in one of the stands’ walls.
“What are you looking for, young man?” They begin to be haggled the fourth tent in. Reigen moves to deal with the seller but hesitates upon noticing the sheen in Mob’s eyes.
“Do you have any matching bracelets?”
They do. And so does every other stand in the line. After careful deliberation, Mob zones in on a pair from the book-centered stand. They are made from soft leather straps and covered in blue-green shells. Mob slides one around his wrist. It falls in place next to the rubber bracelet from the Body Improvement Club. Mob blinks at it, then grabs the other bracelet and gestures for Reigen’s wrist. When both bracelets are on, Mob has them hold their hands side-by-side and stares at them, considering.
Eventually, Mob pulls both off and places them back on the display.
Reigen grins. “For you and Ritsu?”
Mob wrinkles his nose. “No? For you and me.”
Reigen freezes.
Mob goes to talk to the seller. When he returns, his eyes are alight with excitement. “Shishou, they’re only five dollars.”
“What? Sorry, what?”
“Five dollars,” Mob repeats, pointing to the bracelets. “I know that you’re paying for everything already, but—”
“I can’t,” Reigen says hurriedly, then turns and walks out of the tent, limbs growing numb. “Sorry, I can’t—uh, they have popsicles at the beach, I think. Do you want a popsicle instead?”
—
American popsicles come in limited flavors, it seems: strawberry, pineapple, and ‘berry delicious.’ They get two pineapples and set up chairs on the beach. At least, they try to. The mechanics of the plastic lawn chairs nonetheless remain elusive. As Reigen’s extra suit jacket somehow mimics the dimensions of a beach towel, one thing leads to another, and Reigen quickly makes peace with the idea of shedding sand for the rest of his life.
Mob makes to wander off as soon as their spot is set up. Before he can, Reigen reminds him: the ocean is nature’s behemoth with a penchant for swallowing children. Most especially children still dependent on pool floats.
“So, no going into the ocean,” Mob says.
Reigen beams. “Ladies and gentleman, the star student!”
And off the exemplary scholar goes, decked out in pink and green, a walking spectacle of foreign peculiarity. He’s insisted on bringing his gakuran but the weather is much too humid for any sort of arm coverage, so it’s tied around his neck and more of an eyesore than anything else. The middle schooler disappears around a rock formation and doesn’t so much as glance back at Reigen, which should hurt less than it does.
For the first few minutes, Reigen thinks everything will be fine. Mob will wander about and collect rocks or whatnot and Reigen will work on gaining a glamorous tan. It is the perfect day for an overworked businessman and his adolescent minion.
Half an hour later Reigen catches sight of a gakuran-clad figure wading out into the water and commences a wholly appropriate freakout.
He trips over the jacket mat and goes flailing before he’s able to start careening down the sand, yelling with every fiber in his body. Mob doesn’t seem to hear him: in a single breath, his head disappears beneath the water. Reigen freezes. His mind, meanwhile, is already at the edge of the shore, flailing and writhing and berating Mob all at the same time. He’s being destroyed— obliterated —with the sheer amount of panic coursing through his bloodstream.
What is Mob doing?
And then: Ritsu. Good grief, Ritsu’s going to exterminate me.
Suddenly, he’s moving. He hurdles over a stray beach chair, kicking off his shoes in the same motion, and begins splashing his way into the water. The horizon is clear. Mob is nowhere to be seen. But he’s still moving forward, and now the water is up to his chest, and then his neck, and he’s treading water and then swimming and this is the most exercise he’s gotten since the whole 80s step aerobics revival a couple years back—
—he drops to his feet.
Obviously, he’s deviating a bit from his beach-day itinerary. He’s standing in the middle of the ocean. Soaked to the bone, sure, but standing , and he can’t help but let out a little noise of surprise as he considers his surroundings. The light blue aura he’s become so familiar with is pressed up against the water surrounding him, providing him with about two paces-worth of space; above him, a covering of the aura shields against the overpass of waves. He’s been gifted a personal hamster ball of protection, basically. He spins in place, watching the aura move with him.
“Oh, hello.”
Reigen shrieks, then recovers. Presumably, it is Mob that is standing a few feet away, but a layer of water remains between the two of them, obscuring his figure.
Mob moves closer; the water recedes, creating an oval of air. Reigen glances the boy over: completely dry and accompanied by a dog. He does a double-take, then gestures to the boy’s companion in bewilderment. “Uh? Is that a new species of fish?”
“The dog got swept out,” Mob explains. “Shishou, what are you doing out here?”
“Are you serious?” The panic he’s pushed back returns full-force. His finger shifts from the dog to his student. “Hey, Mob. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of the water?”
Mob tilts his head, as if confused. “I’m not in the water,” he says, then gives a light shrug to the air pocket surrounding them. “And… the dog… shishou, too much salt water is bad for dogs. It wouldn’t have been safe for him.”
Reigen isn’t about to let the issue drop. He’s much too drenched to be calm. In fact, he’s nothing less than gobsmacked at the moment, and he attempts to make this clear through purposeful gesticulations. “ This isn’t safe for you ,” he says, a bit peeved when Mob’s expression doesn’t so much as flicker. “You—you can’t swim , Mob. Remember what I said about the ocean? It isn’t exactly the best place to test out new tricks.”
“I knew I could do it,” Mob replies. An undercurrent of a sharp something seeps through his tone.
Around them, the water shivers.
“You—” Reigen runs a hand through his hair, mouth opening and closing and opening as he flounders for a response. Use your words , he thinks. “Give yourself more time, Mob, to—you know. Grow. Before you go off doing things like this. It’s too dangerous to rush into—” They are staring at one another, but Reigen is the one to look away first. “Time’s on your side, okay?”
A beat passes. Silently, the dog circles around Mob’s legs. The boy reaches down and gives it a pat on the head; Reigen’s lips twitch.
“I want to get better.” Mob is gazing at him again. “I need to get better. To… protect everyone. So there isn’t enough time for that. For waiting.”
“Protect?” It slips out before he can think better of it. “From what?”
Mob pauses. His bangs fall across his forehead, obscuring his eyes. “From myself.”
(A pair of fish slip by his head, and the dog curls at his feet, and for Reigen, it is as if he is standing before a particularly peculiar Renaissance painting.)
“You aren’t dangerous, Mob,” he says slowly.
The boy studies him. After a moment, he says, “Okay,” and then they are walking back to the shore and watching the reunion of the dog with his scatterbrained, spray-tanned owner. In the meantime, Reigen decides the whole incident is about as much as they can handle for the day, so he’s turning back toward his discarded jacket when a hand latches around his wrist and he’s met by Mob’s hopeful expression. For a moment, he’s puzzled. Then his eyes sweep the coast and he spots another pocket of air—two pockets of air, really, side-by-side and surrounded by streams of upward-flowing water.
He catches on immediately. His stomach practically collapses in on itself. “Mob. Mob. I’m not entirely sure if—”
“We won’t go far,” Mob says, eyes gleaming. “Shishou, we’ll get to see fish. And… and kelp.”
“And that’s really cool, Mob. Seriously. Our education system works wonders. But—”
“I need—I need to. Practice.” The grip on his wrist tightens, then loosens abruptly.
Reigen exhales.
—
“And this one’s called—”
“An amberjack. Or an Atka mackerel.” A pause. “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Shishou, do you think we’ll see a shark?”
“Um, you know, I don’t see why not. Though before that, I’d really like an estimate on how secure, exactly, these air bubbles of yours are.”
“Oh, actually. I was thinking we could let the shark in with us, or—”
“ Mob—”
—
When Mob wakes up a second time, bed aglow with electric blue and closer to the ceiling than the ground, Reigen is at the counter warming up water. Two mugs wait on the coffee table.
It is an olive branch.
This time, though, Mob drinks the hot chocolate without saying a word.
—
In and out , Reigen thinks. They hail the least rundown taxi they can find and make their way inland, where the houses loom ever larger and fountains become less decoration and more filler for overly large driveways. Despite how much preparation Reigen has put into the whole thing—a three-pronged speech on the flaws of wealth and its children—Mob is glued to the window for the entire ride, trembling with awe.
Flanked by sand-colored pillars and sprawling greenery, the mansion is a ritzy work of arched windows and domed ceilings. It looks out of place, somehow; its overt extravagance teeters into architectural arrogance, in Reigen’s mind, to the effect that he clambers out of the car feeling every inch of the swindler he is.
The client—one Lucian Byrne—is leaning over the balcony as they approach. His face is angular and thin, offset by his bulbous, upturned nose and a body softened with age. He is wrapped in a robe and carrying a flute of champagne; a pompous grin adorns the man’s face. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Byrne calls down. “Reigen Aranaka, was it?”
“Only the greatest psychic of all time,” Reigen calls back. Mob raises an eyebrow at him; Reigen crosses his arms. A spur-of-the-moment rebrand. “And it’s Arataka .”
“My apologies. And who might you be, boy?”
Mob doesn’t reply immediately. He’s preoccupied with the sheer magnitude of the place. Reigen can practically hear the wheels sputtering out in the boy’s mind.
This shock-induced silence spans for the entirety of Byrne’s introductory tour. They are led through hallway after hallway; peek through room after room. After the third in-depth review of a shade of paint (water chestnut white, of all things), Reigen begins to suspect Byrne’s problem is less spiritual than it is a matter of aesthetic taste. Still, Mob remains quiet through it all, even when Byrne throws open the back doors to an courtyard peppered with stray cats. It is only when the spirit is revealed—and subsequently annihilated—that Mob opens his mouth and manages a well-intended, “That’s it?”
At this point, they are standing in Byrne’s private bedroom. Byrne has since exchanged his glass for a pipe. The smoke curling from its rounded lip is comparable to a Victorian Pewter white, Reigen notes.
Byrne coughs, then tilts his pipe at Mob. “Excuse me?”
“The spirit,” Mob says, but he’s no longer looking at Byrne. His hands are curling and uncurling at his sides. “Shishou, the spirit—I don’t feel any others. That was the only one.”
Reigen laughs, a bit incredulous. “Yeah, Mob, that’s the only one. In and out, remember?” To Byrne, he says, “My student’s still young, you see. There’s a bit of a learning curve for these kinds of things.”
Byrne looks uneasy at that, but tips them generously and sends them off with a dozen boxes of Belgium chocolates, so all’s well that ends well. Elation floods Reigen the moment they pass through the security gate and begin the process of searching for a taxi. Money has been earned. Mob will be compensated. And Reigen will be able to spend five months in his apartment stress-free.
It is because of this that Mob’s agitation goes unnoticed until later that night, as they are sitting over a candle and roasting marshmallows and the heat in Mob’s chest has gone straight to his head. Reigen is holding three sticks per hand and looking to add a fourth when Mob looks up from his solitary marshmallow and asks: “Shishou, why did you bring me on this trip?”
“Educational purposes,” Reigen says, speaking around a graham cracker. “And, uh, relaxation purposes. That, too.”
“The exorcism was easy, though.”
“I don’t bother with tedious jobs, Mob. It’s better that I hand them over to you.” There’s a slight strain to Reigen’s voice now, but he continues to form his sandwiches and even leans forward to help Mob with his. “Listen, I feel like I’ve explained this all to you awhile back. You want a refresher or something? Did Byrne say something to you?”
“But if—if the job wasn’t challenging, and you…” Mob puts down his skewer and clasps his hands together, face twisting. “Why am I here?”
Reigen tenses. “You’re my esteemed assistant. Why wouldn’t you be here?”
Mob shakes his head. A few strands of hair stay upright when he stops. “You’re not being… truthful,” he says. He thinks of the tent shops; the bracelets; his hands still. Reigen may not be truthful, but Mob knows he can trust him. He knows he can, but something sharp and resentful is prodding at him, and he knows better than to ignore it outright. “I have things to do, too, shishou. If… if that was it … I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why you brought me.”
“Do you not want to be here?”
“That’s not it,” Mob starts, lowering his head. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Well, you’re being a tad bit confusing.” The candle goes out. “And frankly, I could have brought anyone I wanted on this trip. Just in case you were wondering. It didn’t have to be you. I mean, since our training is obviously so unimportant—”
“If I don’t need to be here, I should leave.”
Reigen stands. His coat is by the door. He moves to get it.
“You should do what you want to do, Mob,” he says, and then leaves.
—
Reigen has this dream, you see.
In it, Mob graduates middle school, and Reigen is in the front row, weeping and cheering, while the boy’s parents stay quiet in chairs ten feet behind.
In it, math and literature worksheets are strewn across the Spirits and Such office, and Mob is curled up in a corner, toiling away at a cluttered desk.
In it, Reigen jogs along the platform of a train station and waves and waves until the car is but a small bead in the distance, and his student, seated inside, is even smaller.
Despite how important it’s become to him—Mob growing, leaving, forgetting—he tends to forget about it all. Because it is the Mob of the present that enraptures him: the Mob who tears up at a stray litter of kittens; the Mob who orders the cheapest ramen on the menu and still saves half for his brother; the Mob who looks him in the eye and says, “I know who you are,” as Reigen gets lost in his own deception.
Reigen has this dream, yes, but more often than not he stares at the door of the office and waits for Mob to come through and hopes that moments will suddenly become infinite, because alongside his dream exists a secret. And that is: he never wants to sit at Mob’s graduation. He never wants to see him bemoan over the tragedies of high school. He never wants to wave goodbye and watch the boy become some insignificant dot in the distance as the train crests over a hill and disappears.
Because sometimes, as they sit together in the office and nurse cups of tea, Reigen glances over at Mob and curses his dream. But he’ll stand up anyway and say, “We’ve got a client!”—because the secret is for him but the dream is for Mob , so he holds out a hand and pulls the boy to his feet, even when his fingers slip and his arm threatens to give way to flesh and bone.
It is another day, he thinks, in his quest to give Mob everything he’s never had.
—
Remember:
A conman is only as good as his truths, because it is there that words may fall apart. Those who eat the forbidden fruit curdle from the inside out, because it is fruit that leaves syrup on the tongue but poison in the heart.
Remember: expose the soft, tender parts to the sun, and the bitter man rots.
—
Reigen wakes up to a plate of pancakes and he’s happy for all of fifteen seconds, because as he’s dousing the whole stack in syrup he turns his head and notices the empty bed next to him. Mob’s bed, neatly made with stacks of clothing near the headboard. He stares at it, processing. The syrup drips onto the table.
This time around, he holds back his panic. He calls reception first and receives a lukewarm dismissal. Security, his second option, consists of two rundown monitors and one portly alcoholic. By the time he receives the grainy footage of Mob wandering out the back exit, his panic buffer has worn off and he’s three streets into downtown, ducking in and out of every shop in sight.
Downtown is a far cry from the sprawling suburbs of the oversaturated brochures Reigen had presented to the Kageyama family. Instead, it is streaked with dirt, reeking of sweat and exhaustion; every person he passes is bronzed, sure, yet weathered at the edges all the same. He questions as many of them as he can—aggressive (but mostly useless) interrogation, the same phrase (“about this tall with black bowl cut—pale and wearing a black jacket”) repeated over and over again in varying enunciations, spread thin with hysteria and fatigue.
“Have you tried the antique shop?” one man asks him. Reigen’s a block away from his starting point and his hands are cupped over his knees as hacks up both lungs—and a diaphragm, for good measure.
“The antique shop?” he manages.
“You can’t miss it,” the man replies. He’s thin-lipped and speckled with pock marks, but there’s a humorous light in his gaze and a casual set to his shoulders, so Reigen weaves his way to the antique shop and spends the better part of an hour calling Mob’s name and cross-examining various employees. ( “You poor thing, losing your child,” one woman says, ruefully. “Though what an unfortunate name he has!”)
Then the hour comes to a close and Reigen is a few seconds away from breaking down and calling Dimple when a familiar jacket catches his eye. It is hanging from the back of a chair—placed there deliberately, and with care. Mob’s gakuran. Reigen maneuvers through a set of rust-colored furniture and draws to a stop next to it. He was here, then. Why, is the question. The area is interspersed with various knickknacks and display cases: a stack of yellowed photos, a basket of soda can toys, a folder of special ‘vintage’ coins. He scours the shelves; once, then twice. Then he gets onto all fours and searches beneath them. It is underneath a gold-plated cabinet that he finds a leather pouch tipped onto its side and looking worse for wear.
He withdraws it.
Dumps its contents onto the nearest table.
Tangled with bits of string are a collection of seashells, each the color of salmon and the size of his pinkie finger.
He grabs Mob’s jacket and runs.
—
Mob is crouched at the edge of the water, covered to his knees in mud and sand. There’s a small bag next to him, full of shiny round objects that catch the sunlight and gleam with all the intensity of fallen stars. For a moment, Reigen thinks he really is holding a star, and then the light shifts again and he realizes: seashells. Mob is collecting seashells. And around his wrist are two matching leather bands, those small enough to thread a shell through.
Mob startles. Looks over. Slowly, he says, “Shishou, why are you crying?”
And Reigen wants to say something intelligent, to spin this into a lesson of grief and anguish and the splendor at the end of it all. Because Mob is staring up at him. Waiting. Instead, he chokes on his tongue and glances out at the beach; feels a million things but voices none.
His hands sweat. He makes no move to wipe them.
—
On their fifth meeting, after Mob demonstrates his powers on a low-level spirit, Reigen takes Mob to a coffee shop. ‘Hot chocolate,’ he says as they are waiting in line, Mob’s hand in his, ‘is good for the soul.’ They sit down in a corner and Reigen breathes hot air onto the window and draws a smiley face; Mob doesn’t laugh, but his eyes go big and shiny, and Reigen smiles at that—enough for the both of them.
“When I’m bigger,” Mob says, curling a finger around his mug, “I want to be like you.”
Reigen stares at him. After a moment, he sighs, grinning.
“Nah,” he says, leaning forward. His free hand reaches over to ruffle the boy’s head. “You’ll be much, much better.”