Work Text:
Mob is afraid of small spaces. It has not always been this way.
He remembers how the boys from third year had cornered him after class, dragged him through the hallway towards the janitor’s closet.
He kicks at them, tries to get away, but all they do is laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
Then they shove him into the closet, so hard that he falls and crashes into the mop bucket, which is full and spills on its side, coating him in the dirty water, and they laugh and one of them takes a picture and then they slam the door and lock it and leave him in darkness.
He cries, because it is safe to cry in the dark. He is alone, and cold, and in many ways he feels dead, but he brings his knees up to his chest and cries.
Please let me out, he pleads sometimes, but they never do. A few times Asagiri comes along, throws a milk carton left out too long in alongside him, and the stink fills up the closet for weeks.
Once, they forget him after school ends, and he bruises himself up after throwing himself against the door too many times. It does not open. He begs, please, please just let me out,
and no one does, because no one ever does.
When Master Reigen inquires as to why he doesn’t want to go get some extra printer paper from the supply closet, he lies. He says that he is afraid of the dark, which is only a fraction of the truth that he bites down on.
We’ll go together then, his master tells him. He thinks that this is not that bad. He still feels afraid, because he thinks that he will never not be afraid again, that his fear will always be with him, whether consuming him or simply biding time at the back of his mind, but when a spider climbs down from where it has spun its web in the closet and stares the both of them in the face, he learns that his master is afraid, too.
It’s okay to be afraid, his master says, and he isn’t sure if the man is just saying that to reassure himself. Even if he is, the words still reach him, a hand outstretched from outside the janitor’s closet.
And he takes it.