Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Although many assume otherwise, civilization has nothing to do with the relative civility of the people inside it. Take New Jersey, for example. If you were to take a stroll there, a few things would immediately come to mind, the most prominent of which being “Oh god, really?”

Once faced with the reality that mankind’s greatest vestiges of culture are, at a personal level, some of the least cultured places on earth, people start to wonder; Where did that word come from?

The answer is cities. Literally speaking, civilization means the formation of a city; it is building a temple to human life, then dealing with its aftermath.

And humans love cities. In spite of their characteristic congestion-or maybe because of it-they migrate towards them in droves, longing to be a part of something bigger. It’s almost like a religion, fueled by a belief in a higher purpose. Some attempt to personify cities in their art: their depictions’ oftentimes more charitable than necessary. Others devote their lives to civic service, defending their glorious little nation from its inevitable, progress-fueled collapse. Most people just live in them.

Most people also don’t realize just how much power living can generate.

With all that life crammed into such small quarters, thrumming and gushing in a great tidal wave of vitality, something is bound to try and take advantage of it.

And sometimes it succeeds.

Mob hit the crosswalk button for the fourteenth time in a row, managing to gain negative ground in terms of actually getting anything to happen. It had been… he stopped to estimate the time. What, seven minutes now? The little guy who showed up and told you when to walk was nowhere to be seen. Mob had a shaky grasp on the concept of urban planning, but he understood that extensive wait times were occasionally necessary. Maybe this was all for his own safety.

He hit the button again, and kept standing.

On cue, Tome stepped into place beside him, chewing on something ineffable-smelling.
“You know you can just go across, right? There’s nothing coming,” Tome said, smacking her gum. Mob shifted his gaze from one side of the road to the other. She was right; there weren’t any cars for miles.

“It really isn’t like we’re going to be arrested for jaywalking,” she continued.

“I don’t want to get hit by a truck,” Mob replied, carefully omitting the ‘again’ from the end of his sentence. Tome rolled her eyes and yanked him onto the crosswalk.

The series of buildings preceding Spirits And Such’s residence had recently been knocked down in order to accommodate a new civic center. Mob and Tome passed by the towering chain-link fence that cordoned it off from public view on their way to the office, pausing to look at the ongoing construction.

“What are you stopping by for anyway? I thought you officially didn’t work here anymore,” Tome said, rattling the NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS sign as she hooked and unhooked her fingers through the barrier. Mob shrugged.
“Serizawa’s visiting his family this weekend, so Reigen asked me to stop by in case anything showed up that he couldn’t deal with. I haven’t seen him in a while. I thought it might be nice.”
“Oh, really?” Tome untangled herself from the fence a final time. They had arrived at another crosswalk.
“He didn’t tell me that. You think he’d bother to inform his most valuable employee about staffing shortages, hm?”
Mob decided against dignifying that with a response. They continued their walk in silence, only stopping once to pry Tome’s gum off her nose.

When they got there, Serizawa was sitting on the couch, reading a light novel. Mob was only mildly surprised.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?” said Tome, pointing an accusatory finger. Serizawa startled, then furrowed his eyebrows. “Am I? I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Oh wait, so that’s what he meant by-actually no, I guess I am supposed to be on vacation. It must’ve slipped my mind.”
He set his novel down on the coffee table. It was then that Mob noticed that he wasn’t dressed for work either. Instead, he was wearing a pair of slacks and a thickly-striped polo shirt. Everything was beginning to add up. It would have helped if Mob had any clue what the sum was.

It was right when his pondering was about to come to fruition that Reigen chose to stride out of the breakroom in strikingly similar getup to Serizawa.
“Ah, Mob! You made it!” said Reigen, clapping his hands together. “I was starting to worry. And Tome, you’re here too. That’s fine.”

Reigen cut off her retort by whipping a scorecard out of his breast pocket and slapping it on the table.

“Now, I imagine you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.”

“To do work?” said Mob.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway. I've chosen to grace you all with my extreme generosity by inviting you lot out-“ Reigen flourished the scorecard, waving it around so everyone could see ”- for a company bowling night.”

Serizawa squinted, trying to make out the name of the proprietor on top. ‘King Bowling’? Maybe?

“Bowling night? I didn’t think we had those,” he said.

“We haven’t so far, but I read in a business magazine that hosting fun activities is a surefire way to facilitate a synergistic workplace environment.”

“Synergistic?” said Tome.

“It means we’ll work together better.”

“No, I know what it means, it just sounds like bullshit jarg-“

“Anyway, as another massive gesture of magnanimity, I've chosen to allow you all to bring a plus one. Mob, how about you? You think your little brother wants to tag along?”

“Actually, Ritsu said he was going out with a friend today,” said Mob, smiling as he thought about it. He was glad his brother was finally getting along with others.

“Eh? He talks to other kids? Well whatever. Tome? Serizawa? Anyone you’ve got in mind?” said Reigen, gesticulating with the scorecard.

“Nah.” Tome shook her head. “Most of my friends have their own occupations after school. You should know this by now. Do you listen to anything I say?”

“I’m not going to answer that. Serizawa?”

“Nope. I’m afraid I can’t think of anyone I’d like to invite.” Serizawa couldn’t remember if any of his classmates had ever mentioned liking bowling. That wasn’t a normal thing to talk about, right? Had he been missing vital parts of conversations? He started to sweat.

Reigen groaned and turned to Mob. “I rented three lanes for this. We can’t justify taking up three whole lanes with only four people. We’ll be pariahs, Mob. Is there anyone else you can think of? Maybe someone from your club, or Hanazawa?”

Mob hummed, stroking his chin quietly. “I guess I could call and see if Hanazawa’s free. I don’t really know why you bothered to invite me along, though.”

“It’s because even though you’re no longer technically employed by me, you were a valuable asset to this company for several years. It’s the least I can do to compensate you for your effort,” Reigen explained, continuing to wave the scorecard around like a Manhattan socialite with a martini glass. Mob had a feeling he’d gotten that speech from the magazine, too.

“And you thought you had to lie to me to do this?” said Mob. Reigen cringed.“I couldn’t count on you showing up if you didn’t feel obligated to, you know? Do you still want to go with us?”

Mob shook his head. “No. I don’t mind coming,” he conceded. Pulling out his phone, he started scrolling through all eleven of his contacts. “Let me call Hanazawa first, though.”

For a brief moment, all eyes were on Mob.

The dial tone rang for a few seconds before someone on the other end picked up, jerking Mob to attention.

“Hi, Hanazawa. Yes, my weekend’s been great, thank you. Actually, I was calling to ask you about something. No, this isn’t about algebra. Would you mind going bowling?”

The full faculty of Spirits and Such waited with bated breath as Mob stood silently, Hanazawa’s warbling muffled by his cheek. Suddenly, an expression of concern dashed across his face.

“Huh? Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you feel better soon. Goodbye,” Mob said, repositioning his phone and hanging up.

“What’d he say?” said Tome, leaning in out of curiosity.

“Hanazawa can’t come. He’s feeling sick,” Mob replied. Reigen raised an eyebrow. “Really? Another one of his ego fevers?”

Mob shook his head. “No. He tried to pierce his ears with a needle and an ice cube and they got infected. He wishes he could join us, though.”

Groaning more pointedly this time, Reigen tucked the scorecard into his pocket and strode towards the door. “Well, that settles it. Come on. If we’re going to be a bunch of lane-hogging assholes all night, we might as well get an early start. Do you all know your shoe sizes?”

Across the office park, in a squarish ditch several meters underground, an excavator was slowly hacking away at the loam where the civic center’s second sub-basement would be. The previous owners of the block had been remarkably willing to sell the building. Almost worryingly so, in retrospect. But Seasoning’s government wasn’t about to complain. You didn’t build a lot of community resources through asking questions.

Another chunk of earth was ripped out and discarded in the massive pile behind the excavator. In a few minutes, something beautiful was going to happen. Beautiful in the same way that a volcanic eruption is majestic; yet scorchingly deadly to everyone who happens to get caught in the pyroclastic flow. It was something that hadn’t happened for almost a thousand years.

It was about to happen now.

The pins clattered out of the way in perfect v formation as Reigen rolled his fifth strike of the evening. Mob, who had been rolling gutterballs all night, silently watched as the bubbles in his Shirley temple ceased to be. His cherry had long since sunk to the bottom. He’d read somewhere that if you left a tooth in a glass of coke long enough, it would eventually dissolve. Did the same principle apply here? He was pretty sure you made a Shirley temple with sprite, not coke. There wasn’t much of the soda portion left, anyway. He’d drunk half of it when they first ordered concessions for their booth.

Mob subconsciously ran his tongue over his teeth.

Tome slammed her hands on the bar table, dislodging him from his fugue state, as well as a few nachos from the dip bucket they’d picked up earlier.

“You’ve got to stop him. He’s gone mad with power,” Tome said, eyes drilling into Mob.

“Stop who?”

“Are you blind? Reigen, clearly. He won’t stop bragging about his win streak. This state of affairs cannot go on, do you hear me? Go and do something about it,” Tome continued, taking a furious bite out of a nacho while dripping more cheese onto the long-suffering carpet.

“I don’t think I can,” said Mob. “Have you tried asking Serizawa?”

“Yes, I have. And do you know what I’ve found out? He can’t bowl for shit. I mean, just look at that.”

She pointed towards the left, where a mother of three was yelling at Serizawa, who had accidentally driven a ball into their lane. Mob winced out of sympathy.

“It’s depressing. It also leaves him out of commission for the moment, making it so that you, Mob, are the only one capable of alleviating me from this misery. Couldn’t you seize the ball with your psychic powers and guide it onto the right path?” Tome said, her voice rising hopefully near the end.

“Can’t. That’d be cheating,” Mob replied. “I could try extra hard this time though.”

Tome sighed and heaved herself onto a barstool. “All right. You go and do that. But make sure it’s as vengeful as possible,” she added. Mob nodded and hopped down. He was, as of that minute, a man on a mission.

It was getting closer.

The soil parted without complaint. After all, it wanted to be found. Only a few yards more. Then every last century would be worth it.

The excavator continued to dig.

Everything about the bowling alley was slightly claustrophobic. From the rigid pattern that the booths and tables fell into behind their corresponding lanes, to the absence of any lighting besides the strips of blacklight lining the gutters and the dim yellow lamps above the ball returns. The ceilings hung just low enough for a tall person to smash their head on one of the displays if they were very careful.

The decor didn’t help, either. Wherever you looked, someone had stuck a piece of neon, bowling-adjacent iconography. Most of the furniture was plastered with color-block pleather upholstery and corrugated steel, like someone had tried and failed to transplant a piece of 1950’s America into modern day Japan.

It smelled of grime and cholesterol.

It was strangely comforting, in a way.

Mob strode across the bowling green, relishing the clack his rental shoes made against the hardwood floor. Right ahead of him stood Reigen, who was rapping his fingers on the return as he waited for it to regurgitate a suitable ball. He immediately perked up upon noticing his former disciple.

“Oi, Mob! Have you seen the way I’ve been bowling tonight? I’m in pretty good shape, if I do say so myself,” Reigen said, plucking a green ball from the roster that had just rolled in. Mob instinctively checked it for an aura, but no dice; Reigen’s new talent was, infuriatingly enough, entirely his own.

Oblivious to all this, Reigen continued.

“So, what brings you here? I thought you were calling it a night. Have you come to admire my form?” he gloated, hunching over and swinging the ball to and fro in what looked like an attempt at a warm-up.

Mob picked up a six-pounder from the rack and peered at its technicolor marbling. “Actually, I was hoping I could do a few more rounds,” he said, hefting it from hand to hand.

Reigen cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh? Thinking about trying to beat me, are we?”

“No. Not really,” said Mob. “It would be nice if I did, though.”

He let it hang from his fingers, getting a feel for the weight. It would be a lie to say that he hadn’t been paying attention to the game so far. He knew how it worked, how the swing was supposed to go, how you were supposed to plant your feet and build up momentum. Mob had carefully been watching the more successful bowlers in nearby lanes, sizing up their techniques, implementing them himself, then failing spectacularly all evening.

Something about this time was different. Maybe it was the competitive quality in the air. Maybe it was Tome yelling at him from their booth twenty feet away. The ball was solid in his hands, more real than it had felt to him earlier.

Mob took his stance, breathed in deeply—-

It was so close now. Barely inches away. The excavator tore through the last few recesses of dirt.

—-swung his arm back—-

And hit solid stone.

—-then watched as it rolled straight into the gutter.

Reigen patted Mob’s shoulder sympathetically, clicking his tongue behind his teeth.

“Too bad, too bad. I wouldn’t be too hard on myself though. It’s easy to crack under pressure, especially considering who you’re up against.”

Mob processed the fact that Reigen was still talking, but he wasn’t listening. Didn’t anyone else feel it?

Right when his ball had struck the ground, it was knocked off course by a tremor. Nothing great in and of itself, but the aftershock of something vaster. Mob had felt it travel through him, amplifying his aura’s undulations. It was terrifyingly natural. And nobody was acknowledging it.

“Hey, Earth to Mob?” Reigen said, bopping him on the side of the head. Mob turned around, and his former master let out a sigh.

“Thank god, I thought you’d gone catatonic for a second there. What was that about, huh? You feel like explaining?” Reigen fixed him with a vaguely worried yet condescending look.

It was then that Mob knew he couldn’t tell them. Not here, not in this context. They wouldn’t take him seriously. It’d just come off as a petty excuse. Not even-he checked, and yes, Serizawa hadn’t felt it. He wasn’t even preoccupied, either. He’d finished his row with the lady and returned to the table with Tome. He was waving.

Only Mob had witnessed that great, hollow pulse ripple through the Earth.

If it proved to be nefarious, then he’d deal with it. This was a later problem. He shifted towards Reigen.

“It was nothing. Nothing at all.”

Several miles across Seasoning City and two inches too deep into the Earth’s crust, the excavators’ operator clambered out of its cab and brushed some soil off the obstruction. This sort of thing happened all the time. Some previous crew found a piece of debris too inconsequential to haul away, so they dug a pit a little ways beneath the given dimensions and stuck it in there. It was nothing to worry about; he’d toss it in one of the containers and it’d be carried off with the rest of the junk. No hassle at all.

Then he stopped brushing and actually saw what he was looking at.

Gingerly, he dug his boot into the dirt beside the promontation and pulled. There was a grinding, sucking noise, and finally a hiss of damp air as he pulled it free.

There were a few senior workers left unloading the frames for the concrete pouring tomorrow. They’d know what to do.

“Hey, get over here! You guys have got to see this,” he yelled.

Like any dutiful masculine entourage, they huddled around to get a proper view of the undefined thing.

They stood there for a few minutes.

They stood there for a few minutes longer. Then, one of them called the supervisor, who called the contractor, who called the government representative, who called several people higher up the ladder than her alongside a full news crew.

The pit was full of people before midnight, all of them clamoring for a look at what lay inside the hole.

Chapter Text

     Spread thinly across the asphalt expanse in front of Salt Mid, the first snow of winter was already being beaten back into the ozone layer by a dedicated team of custodians. Mob stepped into the thawing blanket of slush and sodium chloride, crunching his way to the front door. 

     Last night had ended on a pleasant note. After watching Reigen carp about the bill, Mob left with a smile on his face. He hadn’t even thought about the tremor until Ritsu—at a surprisingly late hour, especially for his little brother—came home. 

     Now, in the fresh light the morning offered, it no longer seemed like such a big deal. Unlike claw or the divine tree, whatever it was had been a one time thing. The pressure behind it had completely boiled off instead of building continuously like it had with every previous disaster in Mob’s life. 

     Just in case, Mob dilated his aura to encompass the city and felt for any unusual presences. There were none. Nothing besides the usual feeling of his friends’ auras and the background noise that came from living in a place with population density as great as Seasoning’s.

     Mob relaxed, releasing a tension in his muscles he hadn’t previously been aware of. He was about to resume putting his shoes in his cubby when Mezato sprang on him like a bird of prey, knocking any plans whatsoever out of his conscious mind. 

     “Mob! Just the man I was looking for!” Mezato announced, whipping her pocket recorder out from some unseen crevice.

     Mob blinked. “Am I?”

     “Yes! And I’ve got something terribly exciting to tell you, though I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now,” Mezato said, leaning in.

     “Just last night, a team of construction workers unearthed the perfectly petrified remnants of a Kamakura period settlement from beneath the site of Seasoning City’s new civic center, right in the middle of the Soy Sauce district,” she explained, sticking the recorder uncomfortably close to Mob’s face.  

    “Some experts say that its nigh-inexplicable ossification may’ve been caused by a nearby volcanic eruption almost a thousand years ago. ‘Japan’s Pompeii’, people are calling it. The discovery of such an important cultural artifact must surely mean something to even the most uninformed citizen, and I’m looking to get as many perspectives on the situation as possible.”

     Mezato hit the record button a couple times, waiting until the faulty mechanism caught with a satisfying click. “So, Mob, what do you have to say?”

     The Kamakura period? Mob faintly recalled learning about it in his last year of elementary school, though he hadn’t been paying much attention. He wasn’t paying much attention now in contemporary world history either, but that was beside the point. 

     He was pretty sure that was when the shogunate had started up. They’d started making a lot of statues, too. Mob’s sixth grade class were taken to a museum where they spent several hours staring at statues before they returned to school, thoroughly cultured. 

      Mob mulled it over for a moment. Then he looked up to meet Mezato’s expression of tense anticipation.

     “I guess that does sound pretty interesting,” said Mob. Mezato nodded, urging him on. “Are there any statues?”

     “What? No, I don’t think so. It’s mainly attractive to anthropologists, not classicists. As in the appeal is the preservation of daily life, not works of art,” Mezato hastily tacked on, after noticing Mob’s growing confusion.

     “Oh. Okay then,” Mob replied. Realizing he had nothing more to say, he resumed changing into his school shoes. Mezato sighed and resheathed her pocket recorder. 

     “You really are no help at all, are you?”

     Mob shook his head in response. “No, sorry. You could try asking Ritsu, though. He’s always been more interested in the news than me,” he supplied.

     Mezato cringed. “I’m not sure that he’d comply. Thanks for trying, though,” she said, forcing a smile. Mob nodded and closed the door to his cubby. Together, they continued their walk to homeroom.

     Clack.

    In a small, enclosed space, something that previously had not been clattered to the floor.

    The settlement was cooking up a fever throughout the city. In middle schools, high schools, workplaces, anywhere that great masses of people had nothing better to do than talk, they were discussing what had been found beneath their very feet. Yes, their feet. No, you hadn’t misheard them, and yes, it really was nearly a thousand years old. The Soy Sauce district sensation had sparked a sense of civic pride in even the most apathetic residents.

     Seasoning City was founded fairly recently in comparison to its neighbors, so its citizens were latching on to this new piece of ancient heritage like barnacles to a cargo liner. Look how long we’ve been here; it seemed to say. Humans have lived in this area since the 1100’s, isn’t it fantastic that we’ve followed in their footsteps? 

     Once the area had been deemed stable enough for proper excavation, the real rumors began. 

     Some bizarre phenomenon in the mantle had left the remains of fleeing citizens distinctly visible. Thousands of dead people—whose petrified corpses were incredibly educational, archaeologists claimed—trapped underground in blown-out caverns of igneous rock. Nothing about it looked natural. A few of the more spurious newspapers proclaimed it to be supernatural: concluding that their strangely perfect preservation was a result of the agony of an entire city escaping, upon the lava’s impact, in ghostly form. They wanted to be found. They wanted people to unearth their pain and despair at its magnitude.

     The more respectable sources said it was probably the result of an abnormally large gas bubble.

     All Tome knew was that her walk to work was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

     The entire block between her usual route and Spirits and Such had been shut down and ripped up. It was clear that any plans for a civic center had long since been discarded.

     Tome understood the hypothetical appeal of a bunch of old dead guys. Especially if they were permanently transfixed in apoplectic agony. It was sick as hell, actually. But in her less-than-humble opinion, they didn’t even come close to surpassing the allure of a bunch of cool, extraterrestrial alive guys. They could keep their anthropology; Aliens were where it was at.

     Grunting, Tome shouldered her way through the crowd of National Geographic reporters who had managed to inundate even the farthest outskirts of ground zero—as Reigen had been calling it. It was abnormally warm for early November, and her uniform was sticky with sweat. She yanked her backpack charms from between a couple of interstitial elbows and arrived, breathless, on the other side.

     Tome’s employer was kneeling behind a small pop-up stand on the sidewalk opposite her. Serizawa, who was stuck holding the sandwich board, waved from beside Reigen.

     Tome waved back and hopped across, dodging a passing food truck.

     “What are you doing on the street? Did we get kicked out of the office?” said Tome, eyeing the spread of marked up trinkets in front of them.

    “No, not yet. What you’re seeing, Tome, is a brilliant marketing tactic in action,” Reigen said, gesturing towards the merchandise. 

     Tome squinted. Various baubles with ‘ward’ and ‘spectral repellent’ drawn on them littered the tabletop. To the left were a couple of canisters of anti-spirit cream, claiming to have been made by a cloister of monks on a mountain somewhere. There was even a bin of rocks underneath the table. Tome could just make out ‘Soy Sauce District volcanic ghost stones!! LEGITIMATE ITEMS!!!’ scrawled on the front.

     She cocked her head, giving Reigen a callous look.

      “Are you telling me you’re actually selling these?” Tome said, picking up a ward from the spread. It was drawn in marker on the back of a bookmark. Reigen snatched it from her and set it back on the table. 

     “Quit touching the merchandise. And yes, actually, we have been making sales. Serizawa, you’re credible. Tell Tome how much bank we’ve brought in,” Reigen snapped, jabbing his finger at his newest hire.  

     Serizawa brightened. “Oh, right! I’m a little surprised myself, but for some reason people love these things, even though there isn’t a heightened spiritual presence to repel them with. I think it has something to do with the excavation’s atmosphere,” Serizawa said, pointing down the road. 

     “We’ve sold around forty so far. That’s ten times as many purchases as we typically get in a day. I’ve got to give the credit to Reigen here; it was his idea to set up outside.”

    Reigen leaned back on his hands and cracked his neck. “Thank you. I'm glad someone appreciates my ingenuity around here,” he said, clasping his fingers behind his head and stretching.

     Tome’s expression soured further. “None of these work, do they.” It wasn’t a question.

     “Nope,” said Reigen, popping the p.

     “So we’ve resorted to straight out lying.”

      “Not exactly.”

     “It says ‘functionality verified!’ on the cream over there.”

     “It’s intended as hyperbole.”

     “That’s not what hyperbole means.”

     “Who has the higher authority on definitions here? As the adult in this situation, who has actually received his high school diploma, I would say I do. So stuff it,” Reigen said.

     “I still feel like we’re doing something wrong here,” said Tome. “Aren’t we harming our customers by making them think they’re genuinely protected in some way?”

     Reigen shook his head. “Look at it like this. This entire environment is built to facilitate the sale of tchotchkes. The drama of the ‘haunting’; the whole spectacle built up around that city; it’s a tourist trap. People are going to want to take a piece of it home with them. It doesn’t have to be legitimate as long as it’s proof they were here when it all went down,” Reigen said, patting the box of collected cash that lay securely next to his knee.

     “We’re not the only ones capitalizing on it, either. You see over there?” Reigen continued, pointing towards the throng in the middle of the road.

     Half a block away from the site itself, a group of food trucks had circumscribed the crowd. Everyone, from the archaeologists who were taking a break to teenagers fresh out of school that had come to spectate the ongoing excavation, was pausing to gorge themself. 

     Interpolated with the trucks, identical pop up shops were making money hand over fist from passers-by. Reigen was right. Anyone with something to sell was taking advantage of the fervor, and those who didn’t have anything were acquiring wares at record speed.

     “You’d have to be stupid to not try and make a buck off of this. Besides,” Reigen said, examining a particularly crude bookmark. “if someone thinks one of these is actually going to protect them, they’ve got bigger problems than wasting money.”

     Tome sighed and set her backpack down beside the table. “I get the logic, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she said, pulling a manga from her bag’s front pocket as she sat. The sidewalk was warm where it brushed against her legs.

     Serizawa shuffled around, repositioning the sandwich board on his shoulders. 

     “Ms. Kurata, you could leave early for today. I’m sure Reigen wouldn’t mind,” Serizawa said, sparing his employer a quick glance. 

     Reigen nodded and flicked his wrist. “Go ahead. There’s nothing going on that requires secretarying today. Unless you want to stand around and drum up business?”

      “Not in the slightest,” Tome said, but halted and turned heel, raising a brow. “And I get full pay?”

      “You’re killing me. This is extortion, you know that? Sure. You get a full day’s pay,” Reigen said, handing her a wad of crumpled yen from his pocket. “Now scram. It’s too nice out for you to be sitting around like this. Go harass some astronomers, or stare into space, or whatever it is you do when you’re not working.”

     Tome pumped her fist and whooped. “Thanks! I’ll see you Thursday,” she hollered, as she sprinted across the street.

     In her wake, dandelions sprung from cracks in the pavement, a full five months out of season.

     Clack clack.

     They were starting to pile up now. Not in one place, but in several, all over the city. Exactly where people would find them.

They say you can tell a lot about a person from the kind of desk they keep.

     Without calling into question who, exactly, is saying this, and why we should trust their opinion on what defines character in the first place, let us consider the desk in front of us.

     Two rows from the back and directly next to one of the English classroom’s four windows, it sits in just the right place to bear the full brunt of the sun’s rays. It’s the sort of spot you choose either very deliberately, or not at all.

     At some point, its owner scratched their initials into its otherwise unmarred wooden surface with a penknife. Later on they attempted to efface these with another carving tool. The fresher scoring had left the previous letters illegible. To the trained eye, it looked like a furious attempt at self-reinvention.

     Neither time had the perpetrator stopped to think about how much it would cost their school to replace a solid oak student’s desk.

     Whoever its previous owner was had been a delinquent.

     Currently, Teruki Hanazawa was occupying it for the first time in a week after suffering a minor cartilage infection.

     “Ah, Hanazawa! Are you feeling better? I heard you caught a nasty cold,” piped Ayaka, the girl who’d sat next to him for his entire career at Black Vinegar. 

     Teru had only bothered to learn her name a year ago once he’d learned, at Kageyama’s hands, that he was no better than the commoners around him. After introducing himself, he’d realized that Ayaka was exactly as mundane as he’d thought she would be. Just because his classmates were deserving of basic respect didn’t necessarily mean they were interesting.

     It was amazing, the things being humble taught you.

     “Yes, I’m feeling fine, thank you. It’s very kind of you to ask,” Teru replied, smiling politely. Ayaka blushed, in a way that was, to Teru, annoyingly predictable. He took his seat.

     Teru idly wondered whether Kageyama would be impressed by his recent conquests in the field of discourse. Sure, he’d been forced to retreat for a while due to extenuating circumstances, but he’d managed to pick up a week-old argument with an intensity brutal enough that it was as if they’d never paused at all.

     Teru was confident that he'd backed his online opponent into a corner in their discussion of the moral character of Vriska Serket.

It’d taken several hundred messages and more than a few evenings spent studying the Wikipedia article on logical fallacies, but he’d done it. Now all he had to do was wait until they responded. No matter what they said, they’d destroy themselves in the process.

     Of course, he could never tell Kageyama about this. This was the sort of victory to be cherished in private. It was also the sort of victory that, once you expanded your frame of reference, was monumentally stupid as well as more than a little embarrassing. 

     Still, it was a victory. Teru would make sure to pride himself on it as long as he took the source of his pride to his grave.

     Teru slung his bookbag over the back of his chair and took out the work he’d made up over the weekend. 

     His ear throbbed dully. Teru winced as he reached up to touch it. The flesh was still tender where he’d punctured it.

     Last week was nasty. His ear was even nastier. Teru had set a new personal record for least time spent gazing in a mirror because of its sheer repugnance. For five days straight he’d felt dehydrated no matter how many fluids he ingested. And to top it all off, his seasonal allergies were acting up. 

     Which was strange, since he typically only got hay fever during spring. 

     Whatever. The point was that Teru had learned his lesson about being fiercely independent. The lesson was that maybe it was a good idea to ease up on it when sticking pieces of metal into your body.

     Maybe he should take Kageyama with him to get their ears pierced professionally. He’d look devastatingly handsome with earrings, Teru mused. He was already devastatingly handsome now, in a stark, discreet manner that occasionally made Teru’s breath catch in his throat.

He was lucky to have a friend like Kageyama.

     Yes, a piercing date was a fantastic idea. It could be a bonding experience. They might even graduate, after over a year of friendship, to a first-name basis.

     The bell rang while Teru was pondering what Kageyama’s given name would feel like on his lips. He discarded that train of thought for perusal at a later date. Teru opened his desk.

     An avalanche of keychains clattered onto the tile before him with a resounding clack, clack, clack—

     —-from behind the rack of kettlebells as Jun Sagawa, new captain of the Body Improvement Club, was arranging the equipment for an activity later that afternoon—-

     —-on top of Rei Kurosaki’s head, falling from the rafters in a manner that not even she could have predicted—-

     —-agglomerated underneath Rising Sun Spiritual Union president Kirin Jodo’s latest shipment of incense, stacked in a jangly, undisturbed heap, like they’d gestated from the bottom of the box—-

     —-and tumbling forth from every cubby except Mob’s at the end of the school day, leaving him feeling slightly left out. 

     The keychains were uniform in nature. No more than three inches long and thinly rectangular. All of them depicted a famous Seasoning landmark, like the cultural tower-flung into space-or the divine tree—also flung into space. 

     Unlike a typical keychain, the links that held them to key rings were fused together. Almost like they’d developed as single organisms.

     This was written on the back of each and every one of them:

     Some people were worried it was a terrorist threat. Others assumed it was an elaborate but unsuccessful marketing stunt, since no one was sure what it was they were supposed to be advertising.

     Nobody thought to correlate it with the excavation. After all, they had no reason to.

Chapter Text

     Ritsu Kageyama, second year student at Salt Mid, stopped directly before the grate in the concrete so it wouldn’t implode with him on it and felt in his pocket to make sure the spoon was still there.

     He always kept one on him. It was the manifestation of several separate complexes that he’d developed over the course of his career as a heap of neuroses masquerading as a person. Whenever he was alone, Ritsu would twist it from within the recesses of his pocket, testing just in case his—-relatively-—recently acquired psychic powers had somehow disappeared.

     The number of recorded cases of people with ESP suddenly becoming victims of psychic depredation was zero. Ritsu was determined not to be the first.

     After confirming that the spoon had not miraculously teleported out of his pocket in the last twenty-five minutes, Ritsu maneuvered around the grate and stood near the fifth lamppost to the right of the school gates. He took a breath, and began to count.

     Suzuki materialized beside him before he could reach seven.

     “You finally called! I was worried you forgot I existed,” Shou said, grinning. His taboo on ESP had lasted for all of two months before he got bored of not freaking out his friends every ten seconds. Ritsu still hadn’t figured out how to bend photons around him the way Shou did. He could’ve just stood there and waited, like a regular person. He knew that he could’ve. Ritsu knew that he knew that he could’ve. 

     “You’re late,” Ritsu replied.

     Rather than waning, Shou’s smile waxed. “I’ve been here for ten minutes already. And you’re the one calling me late?” he said. 

     Ritsu couldn’t raise his eyebrows individually, but he schooled the rest of his face into an expression of cool incredulity. 

      “So you stood here, invisible, waiting for me to arrive, for ten minutes straight?” said Ritsu.

     Shou shrugged. “It’s all about the presentation . Which I thought you had an appreciation for. But whatever.” He spread his feet and shoved his hands into his jeans’ pockets. Ritsu noted the way Shou’s shadow overlapped his own, made salient by the setting sun. The pavement shone orange as Shou stepped towards him. “You told me to come here for a reason. How about you hurry up and tell me what it is already?”

     Ritsu reached into his pocket, the one without the spoon, and seized one of two keychains he’d taken from the confiscations bin at the end of the day after Kamuro asked him to lock it up. His brother had the other one, even though no one was allowed to keep theirs and Shigeo hadn’t found any in the first place. Ritsu wasn’t above a little nepotism when the moment seemed fit for it.

     “I want you to explain this to me,” said Ritsu.

     Shou stepped closer and squinted. “Ok. It looks like a keychain with a remarkably accurate painting of that statue of some Meiji guy that you can find near the tax bureau. Might even be drawn on real glass, too.”

     “You know what I meant. You go to school now. Didn’t any of your peers find these in their desks? A cubby, maybe?” Shou shook his head.

     “Well, they were all over Salt. And the Vice President told me that people had found them at other schools, too. Tell me if they look like a terrorist organization made them so I don’t regret giving one to my brother.”

     Shou extended his hand. Ritsu tossed the keychain over. Shou held it to the side of his head, letting the sun illuminate its finer details. 

     Ritsu knew that Shou kept himself in the loop about this sort of thing. Even though he wasn’t officially affiliated with the government’s espers any longer, he liked to stay up to date on national security.

     The keychains weren’t dangerous. Ritsu had checked beforehand. They didn’t have an aura, and a quick telekinetic dissection yielded nothing but a smattering of glass shards across the student council’s sideboard. No trackers. Nothing that could be detonated. 

     Shou examined the etching on the back; then he lobbed it into the air, letting it spin a few times before it fell to his palm.

     “If it’s a terrorist organization’s work, then it’s not one that I’ve ever heard of,” said Shou. 

     “Nothing supernatural either. There isn’t any aura, though you already knew that, right? I don’t know what made them, but your brother shouldn’t be in any trouble.” Shou handed him the keychain and adjusted his stance.

     “This is a complete letdown of an assignation,” Shou said.

     Ritsu gave him a look. It took Shou a few seconds to register it as incomprehension.

     “It means secret meeting. You’re the star student: you’re supposed to know this shit,” he supplied.     

     “Anyway, we should do something. We haven’t hung out for a week, and before that it was months . Months, Ritsu! Do you know what it’s like to experience best-buddy deprivation for that long?”

     “I’d place my bets on ‘bad’.”

     “You’re goddamn right. It sucks hard, Ritsu. Which is why we need to go and do interesting, exciting, best-friend things right now.”

     Ritsu exhaled. “All right.”

     “And I’m not taking no for an answer, even if you’ve got obligations. It’s not even exam season ye—wait, really?” Shou said, momentarily overcome by disbelief.

     “Yes, really,” Ristu said. “I haven’t got that much to do today. Was there anywhere you wanted to go, or did you just want to get out in general?”

     “Just get out in general. But I’m sure I can think of something. Man, I can’t believe it was that easy. I’ve really missed you, you know that?” Shou clapped his hand around Ritsu’s shoulders. It hit like a sack of bricks. Ritsu sometimes thought that Shou was born hyperdense, in order to compensate for his horizontal and vertical deficits. 

     He winced, but subsided. He’d missed Shou too.

     The two of them strode out into the heat of the afternoon, working their way up to a final destination.

     A dozen feet above their heads, fresh buds wormed their way through the bark of branches, shoving out their recently-withered predecessors and discarding them onto the ground below.

     This desk is immaculate. Nothing takes up any space that it shouldn’t. The school supplies strewn across its surface have, despite their disorganization, settled in admirably. Every crisp page of the English translation homework at its center screams feng shui. Its owner has laid it out in the most studious manner possible.

     They are also six feet away from the desk itself, gradually grinding the bearings of their rolling chair towards the other end of the room in the hopes that if they move out far enough their assignment will simply disappear.

     Mob sighed and reclined in his chair, letting it tip back to the greatest possible angle.

     It was getting late. Ritsu still wasn’t home yet. Mob was glad his brother was making friends, he truly was. He just wished that Ritsu wouldn’t stay out with them for so long when he desperately needed academic advice.

     He fished the keychain out from his sweatshirt, latching on to the closest relative distraction. This one depicted the series of dormant volcanic mountains that ringed Seasoning City’s skyline; beautiful, picturesque, and unsettlingly accurate for something that looked hand drawn. No, they weren’t that accurate. There was probably a word for what they were that Mob was forgetting, but it captured their essence. Their soul, even. Which was strange, because mountains didn’t have souls. He would know.

     Mob held it about a foot above his face, letting the light from his ceiling lamp penetrate it. The glass the mountains were painted on was completely solid. 

      “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” said Dimple. He didn’t stay in Mob’s house as often anymore, but occasionally he’d show up to give trenchant, unsolicited advice at random intervals. This was one of them.

     “Why not?” Mob said, tilting his head until he could see Dimple in his periphery.

     “You can feel it, can’t you?”

     “No.”

     “Eh? Really? That’s strange. It’s subtle, though, so I’m not going to totally blame you here.”

     Dimple willed an arm into existence and pointed at the keychain.

     “There’s an energy coming off of that thing. It’s faint, but it’s there. You feel psychic background noise, don’t you, Shigeo?” Dimple said. Mob nodded. Even people without ESP gave off a slight aura; most living things did. Crowded places typically had a psychic hum reverberating around them. It was rarely annoying enough to upset him, though.

     “Well this feels like background noise, but slightly amplified. Condensed, even. I don’t trust it. You shouldn’t either,” said Dimple. “In fact, I’d recommend chucking that out the window the first chance you get.”

     Mob shook his head. “Ritsu gave it to me. I’d rather not throw away a gift.”

     “What you said doesn’t sound that bad either. Background noise isn’t dangerous. Not even when there’s a lot of it. Why would this be?” Mob said, shifting in his seat. He blinked out the lamp-induced afterimages.

     Dimple narrowed his eyes. “You’d think it wouldn’t, wouldn’t you. But I can’t come up with anything to compare this to. It’s unique, in a troubling way.”

     Hovering above Mob’s shoulders, Dimple peered down at the keychain. “How about you put that away for now? Keep it somewhere safe, where it can’t give me any bad omens,” he conceded.

     Mob returned his chair to its natural resting position and opened his desk drawer. He hadn’t sorted through its contents since fifth grade. He didn’t intend to now. Mob set the keychain next to his array of terminally unused novelty paperclips and shut it for the foreseeable future. 

     A strain of tension that Mob hadn’t initially perceived bled out of the atmosphere. Dimple simmered down, floating towards where his translation homework lay.

     “Is that English?”

     Mob remained purposefully silent.

     “That is English, isn’t it. Aren’t you supposed to be working on that?” Dimple said.

     The silence was now so pointedly overbearing that if a pin dropped, you’d feel guilty for overhearing.

     “You’ve been sitting here for hours and there’s still nothing on that page. Shigeo, it says on top that it’s due tomorrow. You don’t want to be a bad student. How about we start getting that done?”

     Mob had become fond of inertia and found himself reluctant to let it go.

     He sighed, and picked up his pencil. He had work to do.

     “You’re fucking crazy.”

     “I’m not crazy! I’ve even got a piece of paper that says so,” Shou said, kicking a nearby pebble with vigor.

     Ritsu was interested despite himself. “A paper? From where?”

     “Oh, yeah—After pops’ enterprise folded like a cheap suit, they had a bunch of psychs check me out in case I’d somehow found the time to develop trauma. They gave me a certificate saying ‘Shou Suzuki can be trusted not to go completely fucking batshit like his dad, because being a maniac is not hereditary’” Shou said, crossing his arms behind his head.

     Ritsu doubted the certificate actually said that. He nodded anyway.

    “The really insane thing is that they’re giving out sanity awards in the first place,” Shou continued.

     “I mean, I could’ve told them that. I’m sane as shit. But no, they had to make me sit through some goddamn counseling to get an answer I was perfectly willing to give them.” 

     Shou caught up with the pebble and sent it flying, twice as far this time. “You see how fucked psychology is, Ritsu? All that time wasted when they just had to ask,” he said.

       “Anyway, it’s a great idea. People tackle things that aren’t psychic powers like this all the time. When they keep screwing up the big shit, they take some time to focus on the really small things so that once they try it in full again the parts go together smoothly, like taking the bits out of a gummed up clock and cleaning them. All we’ve got to do is find something suitable to train you with!” Shou said, patting Ritsu on the back. Each blow hit like a rubber mallet.   

     Ritsu, who subscribed to the ‘attempt to perform at the highest caliber then break down when you are not immediately perfect’ school of thought, did not like this new idea. Before Ritsu could apprise him of this urgent assessment, Shou barreled on.

     “It’d have to be something small, but necessary to exert control on. An exercise where managing precise movements is the entire point. Like… like pinball!” Shou exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “Pinball’s perfect ! There’s even an incentive besides getting stronger; the legacy you leave behind for future pinball players. Pinballists? Your name on the top of the screen for all of time, or at least until they reset it. Aren’t you glad I’m inventive like this, Ritsu?”

     Shou paused, stopping to register whatever thought had struck his brain. 

     “Though, you didn’t like the arcade much, did you?” he said.”

     “Nope. Not at all. I think it was because there were so many people? I couldn’t handle the volume.”

     “Shit, that’s too bad.” Shou sighed, but quickly perked up. “Maybe we could try coming in the off hours? Or I could ask mom to buy one for our house. A pinball machine can’t be that expensive. They’ve got so goddamn many of them at the arcade—“

     “Are those cigarettes?”

     Shou whipped around, following the path of Ritsu’s index finger. When his eyesight failed him he crouched down to get a better look, Ritsu following suit. In the middle of a tarmac-ringed flower bed lay an unblemished pack of Marlboros. 

     He picked it up and flipped the lid open. Two were missing, but the remaining stock didn’t seem tampered with.

     “Looks like it,” Shou muttered.

     Ritsu frowned and stood up. “Someone must’ve dropped them.”

     “That’s an astute observation.”

     “Shut up. What I mean is they might still be in the area.”

     The two of them scanned the horizon. They were the only pedestrians for a few blocks. Whoever had lost them was long gone.

     “We should go for a smoko,” Shou said, pushing the cigarettes around the box out of a lack of anything more stimulating to do.

     “The fuck is that?”

     “You ever been to Australia?”

     “No?”

     “Well you shouldn’t. It’s awful,” Shou said. “I had to visit once to monitor the AU branch of Claw. They’ve got all kinds of jacked-up and convoluted slang over there. Did you know they call gas stations servos?”

     Shou’s face abruptly hardened. He fixed Ritsu with a serious stare. “Don’t smoke, Ritsu. That was a joke. Cigarettes have negative health benefits. You’ll get lung cancer. I don’t want you to get lung cancer.”

     Ritsu felt the need to express that he had no intention of developing a nicotine habit, nor did he think that a packet of vaguely suspicious Marlboros dumped on the side of the road was a good way to start one. He also knew that bringing any of this up would direct their train of conversation even further from the rails and into a local suburb, causing unconscionable carnage.

     “I won’t,” he replied.

     “Good. Now, what should we do with these?”

     The last traces of sunlight slunk over the horizon, bathing the sidewalk bordering Spirits and Such in a rosy glow. Reigen unclasped the lock on the underside of the folding table while Serizawa bagged up the remaining merchandise, what little of it there was. They’d turned out quite the profit. Maybe too much of a profit, actually. If this kept up, Reigen might have to start paying his employees a living wage. 

     Tome had stopped by again earlier. When Reigen inquired as to why, exactly, she was spending one of the most beautiful afternoons of her youth here of all places instead of participating in classic teenage pastimes—like scramming so he could deal with a buying customer, for example—she explained that all her friends were in the crowd, so she had nowhere better to be, anyway.

     She sat there reading manga for the better part of four hours. Occasionally, the Soy Sauce District Miracle’s writhing entourage would expunge a teenage girl, who would shoot across the street and spend a few minutes yammering with his employee before making her return pilgrimage. Reigen recognized none of them. 

     He was starting to realize that he knew hardly anything about Tome outside of work. Or Serizawa, for that matter. 

     They both had other friends; he was aware of that much. Each of them were extending their respective olive branches towards the world; reaping the rewards when someone who recognized them for the wonderful people they were grabbed it in answer. Reigen dreaded the day when he would try and reach out in turn, only to find that there was nobody willing to hold the other end.

     The excitement around the excavation was concerning, too. Reigen had never seen anyone this enthusiastic about anthropology. Petrified human remains didn’t typically develop a following on par with the average boy band. 

     Reigen wasn’t complaining, however. It was still a spectacle. And the key feature of a spectacle is its profitability. As long as they kept raking in dough, the abnormally large crowd was a boon.

    He flipped the table so the thin end rested on the concrete and slammed the two halves together, along with his phalanges.

     Serizawa watched as his boss screamed and hopped around monopodally, clutching his fingers. They didn’t look broken. Just horrible and swollen. Reigen really was lucky that he hadn’t smashed anything beyond the fingertips, Serizawa thought.     

     A couple hundred yen slipped from his pockets and drifted onto the sidewalk. Serizawa had noticed him shoving the day’s earnings into every available crevice earlier that evening. They’d made around ¥60,000. Reigen’s pockets must have been extraordinarily spacious.

     He bent down to pick them up, then waited for Reigen to finish wailing.  

     “Here.”

     “Eh?”

     “You dropped these,” Serizawa said, extending the bills. Reigen was about to accept them when he stopped, waving Serizawa’s hand away.

     “Keep it. Think of it as a bonus for your hard work today,” Reigen said, shooting him a contented smirk. Serizawa swallowed. He wondered whether it would be prudent to mention that Reigen hadn’t actually given him his salary yet.

     Before he could formulate a socially appropriate response, a hand tapped him on the shoulder.

     “Excuse me,” said a voice, presumably attached to the hand. It sounded husky and tired. Serizawa turned around. Behind him stood a pensioner in a three-piece suit with a well polished briefcase, accompanied by a policeman. Serizawa marveled at the way his toupee barely clung to his scalp. 

     The pensioner cleared his throat, then spoke again.

     “Are you the proprietor of this business?”

     “Ah, I’m sorry, I’m not—“

     “That would be me,” Reigen said, stepping forward. “What do you want?”

     “Do you have a vending license?”

     “Excuse me?”

     “Once more, then. Do you have a vending license?”

     “We occupy the office right above this area, I don’t see why we should have to—“

     “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to cease selling from this location or face legal repercussions,” he said. 

     The pensioner did not sound afraid. The pensioner—or possibly government employee, as Serizawa was now realizing—‘s words fell from his lips with the same cold certainty as blocks of lead. He had gone through this song and dance countless times before, quite possibly with the other pop-up shops that seemed to have spontaneously vanished from their spot across the road.

     “Seeing as your business does not occupy the ground floor, you have no right to use the adjacent walkway for commercial purposes. To set up shop here would require a vending license, which you do not have. Am I correct?” 

     Serizawa watched as Reigen’s lower eyelid spasmed in a way he hadn’t previously thought possible. Reigen shook his head, forcefully regaining his composure. He barked out a laugh.

     “I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding! You see, we weren’t selling food. Just tchotchkes. Nothing that the FDA would need to worry about.”

     “Mr. …?”

     “Reigen, thank you.”

     “Mr. Reigen, I am not with the FDA. I am from the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. It is my job to deal with these cases indiscriminately, even if they do not involve food. Yours is no exception.”

     Serizawa had once listened to a podcast about conspiracy theories. He’d learned that somewhere out there, there was a group of people who’d theorized that every human had a secret code written into their genes that would cause them to either go insane or die if it was repeated to them. They’d said it could be a string of words, or a set of images. Or even a chain of experiences, their incessant concatenation powerful enough to demolish the human psyche.

     Looking at him now, he wondered if this was Reigen’s.

     It really was amazing. Every time that Serizawa thought he’d borne witness to Reigen’s full range of expression, his employer found some new way to surprise him.

          Currently his face was caught in a rictus somewhere between servile cloying, abject horror, and general disbelief. His jaw twitched. With the same force as a briefly stoppered geyser, he launched himself back into the conversation, grasping at every available straw, alongside a few that were just out of reach.

     Something in the corner of his vision caught Serizawa’s eye. Careful not to turn too much of his attention away from the DLCP representative, who had resumed explaining the situation to Reigen, he tilted his head to get a better look.

     The bolts holding the folding table together were slowly unscrewing themselves. 

     This was not unusual. At least, not for Serizawa. What was unusual was how he couldn’t sense what was doing it. This seemed like an important point to bring up in conversation.

     Serizawa refocused his attention and turned towards his employer. 

     “—-what do you mean that spiritual wards don’t fall under the category of performance art? As an expert in the field, I assure you that the act of providing a paying customer with a source of supernatural protection is a poignant, nigh theatrical—-“

     Serizawa sighed. No dice. Well, if this turned out to be an issue, then he was sure it would resolve itself in the following seconds—

     The two halves of the folding table, now cloven, fell to the ground with a SMACK. Reigen yelped, interrupting his passionate monologue. 

     The representative, meanwhile, remained unshakeable. He surveyed the scene, inhaled, then exhaled. 

     “You’re clearly having a difficult day.”

     “Well, I wouldn’t say difficult, exactly—“

     “Mr. Reigen, I am giving you what is called an ‘out’. It would be wise of you to take it.”

     For the first time that Serizawa could recall since meeting him, Reigen shut up. 

     The representative continued.

     “This is your first time breaking this law. If you are smart, then it will be your last. If you apply for a license at your local office and, by some miracle of god, are granted it, then you may resume selling these trinkets to your heart’s content. I will not bother you again and you will leave my ledger, making us both very happy men. It will be as if this never happened. But only if you choose to proceed legally. Do you understand me?”

     Reigen nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously in his throat.

     “Good. Now please, until you receive that license, do not do this again. Because next time I will not be so kind. Have a nice evening,” the representative said, before bowing and taking his leave. The officer saluted and followed suit. Within moments, they’d disappeared around the corner.

     Serizawa knelt and gathered the screws. He felt that they merited inspection. At a later date. Right now, his job was to pick up the pieces.

     Reigen stood frozen, still facing the direction where the representative had departed. Serizawa tugged his cuff and Reigen wheeled around, still struggling to parse most things in general. 

     Serizawa smiled reassuringly. “We should probably find out where we can get a license, right?”

     “RITSU! Dinner’s ready! Did you have fun?” his mother hollered, all the way across the house. He slipped his shoes underneath the coatstand and shrugged off the jacket from his school uniform. Ritsu could hear plates clattering in the kitchen.

     “YES, THANK YOU!” he yelled back, skipping over and almost smashing his toes on the step that led from the mudroom to the main building.

     He and Shou ended up disposing of the cigarettes in a nearby trash can. Ritsu did not think you were supposed to do that. He’d expressed this opinion, and Shou had brushed him off. It was fine. Probably. Like, no one would know it was them, and what were the chances of someone actually coming after them if they did? Slim to nothing, Shou said. So it was fine. Don’t worry about it.

     Ritsu spent the entire walk home stewing in paranoia.

     Dinner would be a welcome reprieve. He stepped into the doorframe and let the aroma of beef curry hit him. Things were looking up already.

     Shigeo was sitting in his usual spot. He looked up when he heard Ritsu enter the room, smiling in delighted surprise.

     “Ritsu! How was your day?”

     Inwardly, Ritsu grimaced. Between the cigarettes and the pinball, he was not exactly having a great time. Oh, and the Vriska dilemma, too. Ritsu had been putting that off. The stranger on the MSPA forums had held the last word in their debate for almost five hours now. This was unacceptable. Unfortunately, Ritsu couldn’t find any way to break through their defense. He’d have to direct their conversation towards a tangential topic until he could think of something; a craven tactic, which Ritsu was ashamed to deploy. He was also ashamed of lying to his brother, but explaining all this would occupy too much time. 

     He smiled at Shigeo in turn as he took his seat. “I’m doing fine, thank you. Shou and I had a nice walk,” he said.

     Their discussion rattled along a similar track for the rest of the evening. Most family dinners did. Ritsu didn’t mind small talk, as long as it was conducted with people he could tolerate. 

     They were in the middle of mulling over all and any upcoming exams when the spoon began to levitate.

     Instinctively, Ritsu checked to see if Shigeo was looking particularly stressed out. He found that his brother was doing the same thing in the opposite direction.

     Their mother clicked her tongue and set down her chopsticks. 

     “Shige, haven’t I told you time and time again to cut out that habit—“ 

     “He’s not doing it,” Ritsu interjected. She faltered. There was usually only one direction for this sort of blame to flow. Their mother coughed, then resumed her stern posturing. 

     “Well, are you the one responsible?”

     Ritsu shook his head. Their parents exchanged glances, then shrugged in unison. Neither of them noticed the rest of the cutlery slowly rising from the table.

     Shigeo’s curiosity was limited. By now his reserves had dried up completely, going out with a bang as he pinned the tableware back to its surface. He wasn’t eager to see what happened once the knives floated up to eye level.

     For a moment, they resisted. Then whatever force was propelling them dissipated, relaxing under the grip of his ESP. 

     Ritsu picked up his chopsticks. They didn’t seem any more possessed than usual. Most phenomena had a logical cause, if you looked at them hard enough. The difficult bit was that Ritsu had no idea what he was supposed to be looking at.

     Several miles away from the suburbs, through a newly-christened gash in a chain link fence, and on the edge of a very large hole indeed, Mezato Ichi returned her bolt-cutters to her purse and squatted so she could get a better angle.

     She wasn’t supposed to be there. Several different signs had told her as much, albeit with slightly different jargon. Mezato had given them all a thorough appraisal, then ignored each and every one in succession. She was never very good at heeding warnings.

     Something was preventing her from dropping into the cave, though. It wasn’t a lack of equipment. She’d come prepared: crampons, a length of rope, bolt-cutters (mentioned previously), a small hammer and a few nails as well as an industrial grade flashlight all populated her carry-on bag. It wasn’t the moral implications, either. Mezato wouldn’t let depravity deter her from a possible prizewinning story. 

     But now, on the precipice of a journalistic breakthrough, she was having second thoughts. A voice in the back of her mind whispered that maybe there were some things she wasn’t meant to see.

     It wasn’t a complete bust. Mezato was a vehement believer in carpe diem, even if seizing her own day meant making someone else’s a good deal more difficult. She unfastened her camera from around her neck and propped the flashlight on a nearby rock. A few shots of the excavation should suffice, despite not being from the inside. Her readers probably wouldn’t want to look at a bunch of old dead guys, anyway.

     As the bulb of Mezato’s handheld Kodak lanced through the darkness, an unseen breeze stirred the soil around her feet. She barely had time to notice the initial disturbance before all of spring’s verdure burst into bloom beneath her, midway through November.

Chapter Text

     It was a fairly ordinary Friday afternoon in the Body Improvement clubroom. The remnants of the Telepathy Club sat under their auspices, feeling faintly guilty about it. Aromas of rubber and sweat mingled with the miasma of poor hygiene from the windowside table.

     With a mournful bleep, Inukawa’s DS battery gave up the ghost.

     He groaned and smacked the console on the table. Saruta and Takenaka had been spared from his fate, he noticed, although the chances of either of them offering up their charging cables were slim. A good half hour was left until club activities let out. The selection of the Body Improvement Club who’d chosen to stay inside were preoccupied with their workout. The only remaining option was to do homework, and that was hardly any option at all.

     Inukawa had no choice but to attempt small talk.

     “It’s nice weather we’re having,” he ventured.

     “Kind of out of season if you ask me,” Takenaka replied, briefly looking up from his button-mashing.

     At a glance, Takenaka suggested almost everything that came to mind when you heard the word ‘jaundiced’, yet nothing that it actually described. His demeanor was akin to that of a sales rep who’d developed a near-terminal case of cynicism after twenty years working customer service. What made it even more impressive was how he was only in ninth grade.

     He rubbed a sallow cheek with the cuff of his sleeve and continued.

     “I don’t like spring in general either. The humidity makes my eczema act up,” Takenaka said.

     Inukawa wondered why he bothered initiating conversations. Takenaka was to casual parlance what a hydrogen leak was to the Hindenburg.

     From down on the mats that lay adjacent to their table, Mob piped up.

     “My dad says global warming’s been accelerating lately. That might explain why spring’s come so early,” he said, wincing as his knees knocked together in the latter half of his banded clamshell.

     A few feet to his left, Akane stretched her band taut and shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s it.”

     Akane was the first female member of the Body Improvement Club to date. Not due to any discrimination on behalf of its recruiters, but because of Salt Mid’s feminine population’s general disinterest in getting swole. Akane wasn’t feminine. She also wasn’t particularly masculine. She was 185 centimeters tall and built like several string beans nailed to a wireframe in the shape of a young woman. She positively gangled.

     Akane had joined—Mob noted, with mild amusement—to attract the attention of another girl. Time was a flat circle; its diameter measured in units of Deja Vu.

     “Climate change shouldn’t make everything come alive again,” she added. “I’ve never seen trees go green in the winter just because it was a little warm.”

     “Well, it’s been great for our garden. The annuals my grandmother and I thought were dead are looking just as bright as the perennials,” said Jun, with a smile. The four sixths of the clubroom who had no idea what that meant nodded along in a gesture of vague support.

     Saruta, who could differentiate between varieties of seasonal blooms, cringed slightly. “Yeah, that’s nice, but our tomatoes are flowering again too. We were happy when they died in September ‘cause it meant we wouldn’t have to pick the things anymore. My mom bought one of those standing planters, you know, the ones with the flap on top?” he said, imitating its shape with his hands in a way that cleared nothing up whatsoever.

     “We put a bunch of mini tomato plants in it, thinking that’d be enough for a regular sized crop. But by the time it reached July, it was a fucking jungle in there.”

     “You shouldn’t swear. This room is a temple to the human body; foul language pollutes it,” Jun chided.

     “Sorry, sorry. But yeah, it was insane. My little sister and I would go in every day to fish out fresh tomatoes and force them on our neighbors. We had tomatoes for dinner for weeks. The ones we couldn’t reach collected at the bottom and rotted into the soil,” Saruta said, shuddering at the memory. “It’s going to be so annoying if they start growing again.”

     The rest of the room winced in sympathy. They hadn’t previously considered the downsides of a bountiful tomato harvest, but they got what he was talking about.

     Inukawa held his slippery grasp on the conversation tight, pivoting it towards a concrete direction.

     “At least it’s pleasant enough to walk outside without freezing your a-butt off,” he said genially. “Ah! You know what, we should go out together and enjoy the day, maybe go to a park or something. What do you say?”

     Mob avoided his gaze in the same way that he avoided everyone’s gaze whenever he had anything less than completely uncontroversial to say.

     “I don’t think I can. I already promised a friend I would meet him for tea. Sorry,” Mob spoke, from the corner of his mouth.

     Inukawa’s resolve wilted somewhat. “Oh. That’s too bad. Takenaka? Saruta? How about you? Would you be up for a stroll?”

     Before they could respond, they were interrupted by the noise an object makes after being displaced several thousand vertical fathoms only to fall to the roof of an unsuspecting middle school.

     It was a horrible thlap.

     Followed by another. And another. And another.

     Emi was rapidly discovering a few key things about herself. For starters, she wasn’t a fan of folding chairs, even as she dug her fingers into the plastic underside of the one she was sitting on for reassurance.

     Emi also wasn’t big on enclosed spaces. Or dim lighting. Or corrugated iron walls, which she could smell from behind Mezato’s corkboard, not to mention several shelving units full of sports equipment. Or maybe she didn’t really mind all these things, and just hated them in conjunction.

     Whatever. The point was that remaining seated was losing its appeal at an admittedly precedented rate.

     Mezato stuck the final thumbtack into the board right when Emi scraped the plastic runners of her chair their first centimeter towards freedom. Sighing, she sat down again. She really hoped this was important.

     “Do you understand why I’ve brought you here today?” Mezato said, steepling her fingers on the stack of overturned milk crates at the center of the room. Emi shook her head. She didn’t.

     “Well, you’re sitting here in the Journalism Club’s headquarters because—“

     “This is your headquarters?” Emi blurted out.

     Mezato pursed her lips. “Yes. As a matter of fact, they are.”

     “I’ll admit, it’s homely,” she said, gesturing to the interior of the sports shed. “We were forced into these conditions since we lacked enough members to form a proper club.”

     “And by we, you mean you, just you, and only you?”

     “I’m a pioneer in my field,” Mezato replied.

     Emi glanced at the journalistic paraphernalia littering the shed’s cordoned off back room. She’d had to climb over a bucket of hockey sticks to get here.

     “Does the student council know you use this space?”

     “I believe informing them would cause unnecessary worry on all our behalves. Besides, it’s not like I can do this at home.”

     “And by worry I assume you mean possible suspension—“

     “We’re getting off topic,” Mezato cut in. She was a stickler for continuity.

     “I’ve heard that you’re a writer. And a fairly good one at that. I specialize in coverage, not colour. Normally my skill makes up for any deficits in style, but this case is different.”

     Mezato propped her arms on the table, looming just close enough to Emi’s face to be uncomfortable.

     “I’ve uncovered something big. Massive, even.”

     Emi swallowed. In her experience, massive rarely ended well. Wonderful, tremendous, exciting news had a habit of leaving the city with a week’s worth of collective amnesia and ripping up the block outside her house. But whatever Mezato had to tell her was already happening, whether she liked it or not. It’d be best to listen and get it over with.

     “Well? What is it?”

     With a flick of her wrist, Mezato tapped her fingertips towards the photos at the heart of the corkboard. A variegated web of yarn streamed from its edges, looping around jagged newspaper clippings before running into brightly pigmented dead ends.

     The main photographs featured a spread of exotic, poorly lit flora planted in what looked like a demolished parking lot. Rivers of colour connected them to two highlighted subsets of articles: one filled with headlines regarding the Soy Sauce District Sensation, and another composed of less anchor-worthy stories about the unusually pleasant weather for this time of year. The other one-or-two-string cuttings were just speculation. Emi spotted a couple of blurbs about streetlamps mysteriously unscrewing themselves pinned on the left.

     Half of the connections didn’t seem poignant, or plausible. Emi had a feeling that Mezato had seen the chance to hang a bunch of colored string everywhere and pounced without an actual plan for what she was going to do with it.

     Dragging her index fingernail in a circle across the central picture’s laminated surface, Mezato continued.

     “I’m not entirely sure myself. But I know it’s important, and I know I need a deft pen to cover it, which I’m afraid I don’t have.”

       This time, Mezato didn’t move. She merely extended her presence several feet outwards from her body and loomed over Emi that way. When Emi caught her eyes, she saw nothing but blazing conviction.

     “Would you do me the honor of co-authoring this piece?”

     Emi swallowed again, dryly. You felt a horrible urge to swallow when talking to Mezato, mainly to stave off your end of the conversation.

     As Emi debated whether even tangential involvement would be worth it, something hit the roof with a bathypelagic thump. They listened to it slide down in silence.

     Another thump came. Then another, of a greater magnitude. Whatever the source of their artilleration was, it was gaining speed.

      Mezato vaulted over the hockey sticks, sprinting out from underneath the distended ceiling into a steady downpour of fish.

     Twenty leagues from Seasoning Bay, after all the commercial trawlers had cried despair and thrown in the towel, the Iakuza Blue’s first mate was considering following in their footsteps.

     His crew winched the net back to the surface for the seventh time that day. Inside lay nothing but an absence of fish and a few muck-ridden washing machine components. It was as if all marine life in their radius had been raptured.

      The first mate sighed and leaned against the stern. Even if their catch weren’t miserable, they would’ve had to turn back anyway.

       In cartographically perfect formation, clouds roiled above Seasoning City like a parallel ocean. There were some places where, even this far out into the bay, the rainfall looked almost solid. Although the squall was gradually attenuating, he didn’t want to risk getting caught while at sea.

      For the first time in a long while, he felt lucky not to be on land.

     “One seasonal peppermint melon with a milk foam cap, pearls, 75% sugar and 50% ice. One brown sugar oolong with strawberry pearls, strawberry syrup, 100% sugar and 50% ice. And one milk tea, please. No adjustments to the last one.”

     The barista barely blinked before punching their order into the colour-coded keypad behind the counter with rhythm game accuracy. Mob watched in awe right until they hit the enter key. The gap between their skill levels was truly immeasurable.

     Hanazawa plucked their receipt from the till, thanking the barista with an effervescent grin. Most of his grins were effervescent. As far as Mob knew, Hanazawa’s natural smile’s resting frequency lay somewhere around 1500 kilowatts.

     “I’m glad you were able to make it,” Hanazawa said. “Our order should only be a few minutes now. Plain milk is an excellent choice, by the way. Too few appreciate its simplicity.”

     Mob nodded. He was entirely in agreement. There was probably something he was supposed to say now. Mob rifled through his mind for a response, and landed, miraculously, on the correct one.

     “Thank you for ordering for me.”

     “Hm? Oh, it’s nothing at all. I’m happy to, really,” Hanazawa said, moving aside to accommodate the influx of customers in the ordering line.  

     “It’s not nothing,” Mob insisted. “It’s a kind thing—excuse me—it’s a kind thing to do,” he said, stepping closer to the wall. It really was getting crowded. One of the major cons of participating in a fad was that everyone else was participating in it, too, often at the same time you were.

      Mob didn’t even like bubble tea. The texture of tapioca pearls, when in his mouth, put him in mind of tadpoles. He’d never eaten a tadpole before, but Mob had a feeling that this was an almost identical experience. 

     Behind the sneezeguard, a beleaguered employee called out Hanazawa’s name. He maneuvered through the crowd and grasped for their order.

     “Well, it shouldn’t be. It’s common sense—thank you so much—that if you have a friend who’s uncomfortable speaking publicly, you should speak for them, if they’re all right with it,” Hanazawa said. He’d resorted to hovering their drinks above the throng. Once they no longer risked clocking a bystander, he let them drop into his hands.

      Mob wouldn’t call it common sense. He knew that his mother called it enabling. But he was glad that Hanazawa didn’t mind.

      They stepped out onto the sidewalk. Hanazawa handed him his tea, floating his own drinks abut his head.

     Mob took a sip and grimaced. Tadpoles. He resolved to finish it as slowly as possible.

     Fortunately, it stopped raining a while ago. The sun had come out, bathing all of Seasoning in a sweltering glow. They watched a sanitation crew load barrels of still wriggling fish into the back of a garbage truck. Mob wondered if they were cooking on the sidewalk.

      Hanazawa must have been cooking himself. Though if he was, he was very good at hiding it.

     Despite several meteorological warnings and all common sense, he’d worn a chunky plastic jacket over a long-sleeved shirt. Mob could tell that it was long-sleeved because the jacket was translucent, save for a thin film of glitter sandwiched between its pellucid layers. His sandals were the same; they sparkled in the sunlight where they poked out from underneath the fringe of his acid-wash jeans. Hanazawa squeaked as he walked.

     With the signature gurgle of ice-impeded suction, Hanazawa polished off the first of his teas. He nonchalantly chucked its husk on top of a fish pile, eliciting a polyethylene creak. Then he turned his gaze upwards. Above him, despite their anachronistic flowering, the sakura provided no shade whatsoever.

      “Things’ve been strange around here lately, haven’t they?” said Hanazawa.

     Mob shook his head. “No. I don’t think so,” he replied, toeing a mackerel that the sanitation crew missed out of the way.

     “Stranger than usual, I mean.”

     “Ah.”

      At the bottom of his cup, Mob watched particles of flavor congeal into a thick sludge beneath the tapioca. He hazarded a timeframe for ‘lately’, then mulled over the last few weeks.

      To say that life in Seasoning City was bizarre, off putting, and occasionally downright dangerous would be an understatement. Something about Seasoning just made property values plummet: civic catastrophes transpired with such an alarming frequency that in a few select districts the average rent was ¥3000. If there hadn’t been a supernatural disaster in over a month, then something was terribly wrong.

     If inexplicable phenomena were happening with a greater magnitude than usual, however, Mob hadn’t noticed. He stared down the shaft of his straw in quiet contemplation.

     “I guess the weather’s pretty unusual,” Mob said slowly. He furrowed his brow. “So it isn’t global warming?”

     “Well, I suppose some of the shift in temperature could be attributed to that. Greenhouse gasses are still an impending issue,” Hanazawa said gravely.

     “But no, I don’t think that’s it. It shouldn’t be this severe. Even if it were, the seasons would need a few more years to change this thoroughly,” he said, plucking a cherry blossom from an overburdened branch and almost tucking it behind Mob’s ear before halting and putting it above his own.

     Before Mob could attempt to fathom the social context behind his actions, Hanazawa whipped his phone from his jeans pocket and opened the calculator. He punched in 413,612 and let it rest without any further mathematical alteration as a loading screen popped up. The calculator background faded, revealing an array of documents. He pressed on the one labeled Conspiracy?? Maybe, then scrolled through dozens of screenshotted chunks of articles. Interpolated with the excerpts were blurbs of justifiably paranoid rambling. Mob’s eyes darted across the screen:

     When pressed for an opinion, old lady I helped cross the street described weather as quote very nice endquote. No concern for environment. Possible brainwashing?

     Spring is limited to Seasoning. Regular winter everywhere else. Definitely important, refer to later.

     Black Vinegar students said they'd seen chalk floating in the physics classroom then quote could you please go away now you're freaking us out endquote before fleeing school adjacent alleyway. Apprehension: any significance?

     Fish??? Unconnected so far but possibly important. Refer to later.

     “When combined with the keychains, and the fish, and several lesser reported incidences of objects lifting themselves without any visible source of propulsion, we have a problem,” Hanazawa continued. “And I’ve got an idea of what’s causing it.”

    At last, he hit the bottom of the page. Mob peered over his shoulder and squinted to read it.

    Blown up excessively large, with a crew of neat little arrows that an ahead-of-its-time document editing feature allowed to exist drawn around it, was a picture of the Soy Sauce District Sensation, depicted without its recently acquired verdance.

     “Around one week ago, stranger than usual phenomena started cropping up all over the city. The only thing newsworthy enough to possibly be an inciting incident within that stretch of time was the excavation,” Hanazawa explained.

     “I know it’s hasty to put too much faith into a probable solution without considering the other options, which is why I’ve checked up on all the local terrorist groups, too. None of them seem culpable.”

     “We have local terrorist groups?” said Mob, bewildered.

     “Not anymore,” replied Hanazawa, with a hint of smug satisfaction. “But they couldn't have done it anyway. It’s simply too great a scale.”

     Hanazawa turned his head from the phone and locked eyes with Mob.

     “Kageyama, would you happen to have any experience with large clusters of ghosts?”

     Mob racked his brains. The only suitable memories he could conjure were the Honeido Tunnel and Mogami. He went for the former.

     “I think so.”

     “Oh, really? That’s good. I was hoping one of us would have some frame of reference. Because this,” Hanazawa said, pointing towards the document, “looks like one of those.”

     In moments like these, Mob was thankful to have paranoia-stricken, occultist friends. Without them, his personal gossip radar was about as functional as a secondhand crystal radio set assembled by a dyspraxic nine year old.

     “Do you mean that the people who died there didn’t pass on?” Mob said carefully.

     Hanazawa nodded, slurping on his auxiliary tea. “Definitely not neatly. It would’ve been hard for them to do so, especially given how it happened. Now, in your experience, do areas with an abnormal concentration of psychic energy often exhibit unusual behavior?”

     “Yes?”

     “Well then, there we have it,” Hanazawa said, shutting off his phone and shoving it into his pocket. “Based on the size of the site, archaeologists estimate that around 2,000 people were caught in the eruption. The energy left behind after they perished must’ve been released when they cracked the cave open, and now it’s causing anomalies. If we want them to stop before they cause serious trouble, we have to exorcize them.”

     Mob nodded in tentative agreement. It all seemed to line up perfectly.

     Although, that was the problem, wasn’t it? It was too perfect. Much too elegant to be true; like an equation with half the steps missing that you’d rather not question since it ended in a whole number. Mob was familiar with those.

     What else was buried besides people? The individual soul was a powerful thing. But to warrant this kind of impact, something big needed to die.

     Deep within the recesses of his mind, a gear locked into place. The wheels were turning now; at a glacial pace, sure, but they were turning nonetheless.

     They ground to a halt as Mob moved to inform Hanazawa of this new development, momentarily interrupted by someone shouting from across the street.

     On the other side of the road, he could see Tome yelling and waving her arms frantically. Beside her was someone he didn’t recognize.

     Hanazawa put his hand to his brow and squinted to see them through the sun’s glare.

     “Is that a friend of yours?”

     “Yes,” Mob confirmed. “I think you’ve seen her before, when you stopped by our school that one time?”

     “Ah, right. Her. She’s… interesting, isn’t she?” Hanazawa said.

     “Tome’s a very nice person,” Mob insisted.

     “Right, right. Do you think we ought to join them?”

     “Maybe. Though they might be coming here—ah.” They’d have to walk over now. Tome had resorted to semaphore.

     Once they’d crossed the street, Tome lowered her takeout menu/signaling flag and put her hands on her hips.     

     “What the hell took you so long? When a girl summons you, you respond immediately,” she said.

     “Sorry,” Mob said. “We were in the middle of a conversation.

     “Well, that’s all right then,” Tome conceded. Her eyes drifted towards Hanazawa. “Oh. It’s you.”

     Mob blinked. “You know each other?”

     “Yeah. He stops by Spirits and Such occasionally. You should visit more often, by the way. You miss a lot. Anyway, we should do introductions,” Tome said, nudging her friend to the foreground.”

     “You two, this is Haru. She’s one of my friends from school. Haru, meet Mob and Hanazawa. They’re psychics. I’ve told you about them.”

     Haru waved. Mob waved diffidently in reply.

     “Hanazawa Teruki, though you can call me Teru. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Hanazawa said, turning up the wattage on his smile. He stuck out his hand. Haru stared at it blankly before giving it a quick shake.

     Tome gestured to a cafe down the road with her menu. “Good. Now that we’re all familiar, do you want something to eat?”

     Teru was, he’d decided, an incredibly fortunate person. Not by dint of his psychic powers; those were just another facet of his personality. No, his blessings lay in his social graces. Specifically in his ability to persevere in otherwise perturbing circumstances. Without it, he doubted that he would’ve stayed silent for this long.

     Haru had been staring at him for the last four and a half minutes. It wasn’t the usual stare girls gave him, either. Teru was accustomed to ignoring those. Her eyebrows were locked together in concentration. He could feel her gaze slowly boring a hole in his skull.

     Teru had responded by keeping his own eyes locked firmly on the takeout menu. If she was trying to express interest in some roundabout way, then it wasn’t as if he had the means of returning it.

     He and Kageyama had more important matters to attend to. Teru wished they could get this over with already.

     Above the menu’s inexpertly laminated rim, he spotted his salvation.

     Tome and Kageyama were nearly finished discussing their orders. A nastier part of him wondered what was so captivating about varieties of mediocre ramen that it required cloistering their attention to the other half of the table rather than extricating him from this situation immediately.

     Teru brushed those thoughts aside. It’d be over soon enough. All he had to do was give them a little push. He lowered his menu and cleared his throat.

     “If you all are just about finished, then I believe I’ve found something suitable—“

     “I knew it!” Haru blurted out, jolted from her cogitation. “I knew I recognized you from somewhere!”

     Teru’s head jerked clockwise. Then he relaxed. This was familiar territory. He smoothed a lock of bleach-brittle blonde hair behind one ear, smiling coyly.

     “Oh? Is that so? Maybe you saw me at a soccer match, or in the pages of a local street fashion magazine? I’m afraid reporters do hold me up often,” He said.

     “You were that ochimusha on the news last year!” Haru said enthusiastically. “My little sister said she saw you flying on her way home from school!”

     Teru’s smile flickered.

     “She’s going to be so thrilled when I tell her about this,” Haru yapped. “Our mom didn’t believe her at first, but after we watched the broadcast we knew it had to be true.”

     Teru wished she would shut up. He knew that he was allowed to wish she would shut up because wishing that other people would shut up was inherent to human nature, and denying himself fundamental human rights would only hamper his quest to become a better person.

     Teru silently congratulated himself on his latest milestone in cerebro-heterotopia-derived ethics.

     “You must be mistaken; I’ve never even been near Black Vinegar,” Teru said, forcing the words to flow like silver.

     Behind his upturned menu, the corners of Kageyama’s mouth did the opposite.

     “But Hanazawa, don’t you go to school ther—“

     “And besides, I wouldn’t be caught dead with hair like that,” Teru plunged on. “You really must have the wrong guy.”

     Haru sank in her seat, momentarily deterred.

     “Oh. Sorry about that,” she mumbled.

     “It’s perfectly all right. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes,” he assured her. “Now, where were we? I believe you were about to order?” Teru said, looking pointedly at Tome and Kageyama.

     Tome’s head snapped up. “I’ll have the beef bone broth. Number fifteen,” she said, jabbing her finger at the menu. It made a wibble-wobble noise. “And the rest of you can’t order too many add-ons because I’m on a budget. It’s hard,” Tome griped. “It’s hard living on an allowance of three thousand yen a week. It’s hard and no one understa—“

     She was abruptly drowned out by a sudden pressure. Neither Tome nor Haru nor any of the passersby took notice. But Kageyama’s attention was captivated. It was a distinctly psychic pressure: like an electric blanket had been draped across the city, tense and tight and fizzling statically throughout the atmosphere. If one were to pause for a moment and imagine a sort of psychic barometer, it would’ve been close to bursting. Teru exchanged glances with Kageyama. He looked worried.

     The air crackled one last time, shifting like a seam stretched to its limits.

     And the barometer plummeted.

     Jung-woo Kim of Kim’s Largescale Comestibles whistled to himself as he strode down the walkway towards the industrial kitchens at the center of his warehouse. He was a happy man; he had good reason to be.

     Over the past ten years, Kim’s Largescale Comestibles had become a staple in the Japanese commercial catering industry, mainly because their product was edible. This was already a step up from most commercial caterers.

     Jung-woo had gotten off to a rough start, but it was amazing how quickly people abandoned their nationalistic vitriol when you served them a hot meal.

     He finished the last few bars of maestro Young’s opus Back in Black and stepped off the catwalk, fastening his work apron. The latest batch of cutlet bowls was finished and ready for shipment to no less than fifteen different retirement homes. All Jung-woo had to do was make sure everything was in place, then tell his employees to load the trucks.

     He opened the door. Where seven hundred cutlet bowls had previously been lying on the sheet metal heating racks, there weren’t.

     They looked up in unison, towards the rip in the pressure.

     Like breaded hailstones, deliciously warm pork katsu tumbled forth from the sky.

From several yards above the canopy, all one could see of Shigeo and his friends were a couple of frantic auras, manifested as coloured dots. Dimple could hear them perfectly fine, but that was a different matter.

     He watched as Shigeo’s buddy—Teruki, was it?—held up a barrier around their table and yanked Shigeo’s own brilliant blur of purple towards his sickly yellow one for a more specific kind of protection.

     Dimple materialized an eyebrow just so he could raise it.

     You didn’t have to hover peripatetically around him for months to realize that Teruki was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Having eyes would do the trick.

     Most of the time, Shigeo’s personal affairs were nigh-impossible not to mess with. But Dimple thought he’d let this one sort itself out.

     He reoriented his attention to face the ensuing chaos. A slab of breaded pork phased through him before diving towards the pavement, hitting every branch on the way down.

     Someone in Shigeo’s entourage was yelling. Nearly everyone was yelling by that point. Innocent bystanders screamed and ducked for cover underneath nearby storefronts; it was almost as bad as the fish.

     The distance between anomalies was swiftly closing, and they were getting dangerous. It was high time Dimple nipped this in the bud. He should’ve done so days ago.

      As discreet as a ladybug, Dimple meandered away from the scene and towards the center of town, hardly pausing to observe the accumulating traffic below. A peculiar density, not unlike the one he’d observed in Shigeo’s room a day ago, was accumulating inside Seasoning’s heart. He drifted through the fence bordering the excavation and into the hole.

      Tangled around pieces of forgotten archaeological equipment were patches of Carboniferous growth. The deeper he went, the denser they became. Everything glistened with condensation, formed by the increasingly muggy heat. To someone with skin and organs it would’ve been unbearable. It was times like these that Dimple was glad he was dead.

     After traveling farther than the cave should’ve logically extended, the jungle petered out and resumed being a stark volcanic wasteland, which it hadn’t actually stopped being in the first place. Here, diverted from their usual paths, all of Seasoning’s local leylines convened in a viscid vortex. The background noise was so thick you could cut it.

     Dimple laid eyes on its center. Bingo.

     “You know,” Dimple said, fashioning himself an arm out of spare psychic energy, “you’ve done an admirable job here. A lot classier and more confusing than anything I could’ve managed. Really got to hand it to you.” Another arm burst into being, followed by a grotesquely muscular leg. “But you’re causing damage to the city. You even interrupted a good friend of mine’s outing. And no matter what you are, I can’t respect that.” The final few appendages solidified. Where he once floated, Dimple stood, cracking a set of knuckles he’d brought into being for that express purpose.

     “You don’t seem too hostile. If you play nice, this’ll all be over quickly. Pity we couldn’t fit a real conversation in, though,” Dimple said. “Too damn bad. Now, are you ready to say goodbye?”  

     The thing at the center of the vortex remained silent. It hung there, letting the leylines branch out from its shell like an oversized seed.

     Dimple cocked his neck and peered closer. Most upper-class spirits weren’t complacent in their own deaths.

     He hesitated. Fair play wasn’t his style, but whatever this was deserved a fighting chance, if only because he wanted to see how it reacted.

     Then it opened its eyes.

     “Oh, shi—“

     His last words were a grave understatement.

     When the Soy Sauce District Sensation first made contact with the press, scientific newspapers postulated that its strangely perfect preservation was probably the result of a gas bubble.

     In a different world, they might’ve been right.

Chapter Text

     Now the sun sets. Vibrant hues of pink and orange reflect themselves off of the massive east-facing Palladian windows lining the mansion at the end of the road, painting a crepuscular frescoe. They shine effervescently in the dying light.

     They also shake on every offbeat of 197 BPM, rattling in their panes. Something smacks into them from the inside before reorienting itself and running off in the opposite direction. 

     On the second loop around his room, Shou Suzuki remembered to kick the hair dryer cord out of the way so he wouldn’t trip on it again. He did so. Then he dove onto his bed, barrel-rolling to the beat. 

     It was a miracle he hadn’t tripped on it earlier. The only reason he hadn’t tripped on any of the other sundry teenage clutter littering his bedroom floor was the surplus space it offered for him to run around in. 

     Shou tumbled off the mattress only to spring up again, just in time for the second chorus. He whooped and sprinted off to complete another circuit.

      Johnny, Evan, Ian, Everybody come along..

     A new sax section blared through the speakers. It throbbed under the floorboards as Shou accidentally slammed the side of his head into a bookcase for the third time that afternoon. He promptly shook it off and resumed spinning circles around his carpet. Nothing so trivial as mere bodily harm could deter him for long.   

     And the world will turn to flowing pink vapor stew ( Whackadoo! Whackadoo! Whackadoo! )

     An unidentifiable noise pulsated from downstairs, offsetting Angelo Moore’s heavenly rhythms. Shou skidded in his socks, stopping just in time to not crash into his speakers. He turned the volume down an experimental ten degrees. The noise revealed itself to be his mother, yelling at him from the parlor. Shou hurriedly cranked it the rest of the way towards zero and flung his door open.

     “—AT THE DOOR.”

     “YES?” Shou hollered.

     “I SAID, YOUR FRIEND’S AT THE DOOR.”

     “WHICH FRIEND?”

     “THE ONE YOU TOLD ME WOULD BE COMING OVER TODAY. HE’S BEEN WAITING FOR ALMOST A MINUTE NOW, SHOU.”

     “I’M COMING, I’M COMING!”

     Shou scrambled down the stairs, past his disappointed mother, and onto the doorstep, where Ritsu was standing there a full half hour before he was supposed to.

     “You’re early,” Shou said.

     “I am.”

     “Any reason why?”

     “Half the student council called in sick today. Apparently there’s a bug going around. Or at least it’s going around us specifically. Either way, the president said not to bother dropping in,” Ritsu said. “So I left.”

     Shou nodded. It was a solid excuse. He stepped aside, letting Ritsu scuff his shoes on the doormat. He watched his houseguest’s eyes rove around the room, checking in case they’d managed to miss a pair of slippers.

     Shou fumbled with the edge of his sweatshirt, purposefully avoiding his gaze.

     “Uh, yeah. We haven’t got any. Guest slippers, I mean. ‘S all right though, since you can slide down the hallways more easily this way. There’s a lot of those. They’re pretty long,” Shou mumbled, before perking up. “Anyway! Let me show you around.”

     The rest of the house was considerably less lived in than Shou’s bedroom. He led Ritsu past towering stacks of perpetually unopened boxes, through the halfway shrouded dining hall, and into the living room, where the few pieces of furniture his family used with any regularity were clustered in the middle. In a corner by the side door sat what was, presumably, the mail pile.

     Amidst several weeks worth of unread magazines lay a distinctly boxish protrusion. Shou brushed a stack of papers off the top and shoved it into the open. On its side, in smudgy block print letters, read Chicago Pinball, LTD.

     Ritsu gasped. “You didn’t.”

     “But I did!” Shou said, with the sort of manic enthusiasm employed by people who’ve sunk too much money into an idea to not be excited by it.

     “I’ve got some other stuff too, of course, in a bag upstairs. Like those little maze puzzle thingies, where you’ve got to move the ball around. You know what I’m talking about. And,” he continued, “I even drew up some diagrams of different ways to bend stuff, like spoons. Really specific ones, for you to follow. Because you said the problem was a lack of specificity, right? You were just hurling your powers at things and praying it worked. Now you’ve got designated ways to use them, so you can get the intricate bits down.” It was clear he’d spent time ruminating on this.

     “You’re lucky you met me, Ritsu,” Shou said, clapping his hand on his dear friend’s shoulder, who winced at the impact. “I doubt anyone else could’ve given you advice this good, huh?”

     Deciding to risk it, he stole a glance at Ritsu’s face out of the corner of his eye. He was smiling. Subtly, but still remarkable enough of an occasion to shut Shou up for a moment.

     Ritsu resumed regarding the box with newfound tenacity. “We ought to get it out and get started, shouldn’t we?”

     It was Shou’s turn to wince. He cleared his throat. “Right. About that. It would be really nice if the whole thing were to come assembled already, wouldn’t it? Almost impossibly convenient, no?”

     Ritsu nodded. It definitely would be.

     “Well, that’s because it is impossible. Apparently you can’t just ship an entire damn pinball machine overseas without damaging it or some shit, who knew? So we have to put it together ourselves, from scratch,” Shou said.

     Ritsu blinked. Then he blinked some more. He was good at resignation; it was just that he needed a running start.

      He sighed, and was about to ask Shou where he kept his boxcutters when a peal of thunder erupted in the distance. 

     Outside the window, Ointment City’s milieu was pleasantly chilly, appropriately dead for this time of year, and, not presently, raining. Seasoning City, which was only a bus ride away, shouldn’t have been any different. But Ritsu knew a distinct meteorological climate when he saw one. Seasoning’s microstorm was a black blob on the horizon, confined bafflingly within city limits. It was tenebrous and it boded.

    His brother said he was going out with a friend that afternoon. Watching it unfold now, Ritsu hoped they’d made it home alright…

     Mob maneuvered through the street, bobbing and weaving as unobtrusively as he could while simultaneously being confined with and attached to three other people. It wasn’t an easy task. The thoroughfare was getting crowded too, as some of the more enterprising citizens re-emerged from their houses with baskets. He could just make out his friends from beneath the screaming crowd and the occasional bong when a piece of cutlet ricocheted off of Hanazawa’s aura. As they wormed their way to the center of the city, what Mob heard was this:

      “What the hell are you running for?!” Tome shrieked. “There’s never been anything more clearly the work of aliens, and you’re just—you’re just fleeing ! Go up! You can fly, can’t you? Use your goddamn psychic powers for the right thing for once and take me up there!”

     “I doubt it’s aliens. And I’m not running from anything, I’m running towards something. There’s a difference,” Hanazawa said, shouldering past a group of stragglers. 

     “Then stop it! This is obviously more important!”

      “Look, it’s not aliens, all right? It never was. It’s a different thing entirely,” Hanazawa snapped. “Kageyama and I already figured out what’s causing this a while ago, and it’s not that.” The group stepped over an upended garbage can in single file order. Most freestanding objects had been overturned in the chaos, further limiting the space that Seasoning’s residents had to experience mass hysteria in. Mob felt relieved he hadn’t been caught in the fish.

     Tome muscled her way to the forefront of the barrier, struggling to keep pace.

     “Well, what is it then? You might as well tell me.” 

     “Have you looked at the news lately?”

     “This is because of the weather? I don’t think global warming entails showers of cutlet.”

     “Try again.”

    For a moment, Tome was silent, save for the offhand short-of-breath gasp as they sprinted through the city. Then a realization shook her from her harried contemplation.

    “You don’t mean the excavation, do you?”

    “I do,” Hanazawa replied. “There’s an enhanced psychic presence somewhere in there that’s responsible for these phenomena.”

    “But that’s right down the road from Spirits and Such.”

    “Is it now? That’s too bad. I hope they aren’t caught in the carnage.”

    “No, you don’t understand. Serizawa would’ve sensed something by now, if there was anything to sense. You’ve surely missed a possible explanation. Extraterrestrial interference, for example.”

     “Have you considered that he might be wrong?”

    They’d made it out of downtown. Hanazawa’s bubble burst, and they decelerated onto the local river’s concrete banks. The cutlet shower was thinner here. Collectively, they paused to catch their breaths. Sirens wailed mutedly in the distance.

     Haru’s phone rang, breaking the relative silence. She excused herself and stepped aside. After a minute or so she snapped it shut and shuffled forward, looking embarrassed.

     “I’m so sorry, but my mother wants me home. Doesn’t think it’s right for me to be outside in a.. storm, like this. I’ve got to go. It was nice meeting you two though,” she said, giving Mob and Hanazawa a halfhearted grin.

     Tome blinked. “Oh, really? Okay then. I hope you get there safely.”

     Haru bowed slightly. She dipped out, speedwalking back into the fray. Mob waved, then realized belatedly that she couldn’t see him. 

     Hanazawa’s eyes trailed after her for the briefest of moments before snapping back to the situation at hand. He cocked his hips—allowing them to resume what was, by now, their natural position—and faced Tome.

     “Now look, I have nothing but the greatest respect for Serizawa as a fellow ESPer, but apparently his perceptive abilities aren’t up to snuff,” Hanazawa said, in tones specifically engineered not to sound like they belonged to someone who refused to admit they could be wrong. 

     “It’s no fault of his own, of course; the only reason Kageyama and I were able to pin the cause down was our extensive research.” Mob felt compelled to point out that he had contributed a total of sixteen words to that particular conversation, not to mention absolutely zilch in terms of investigation. Before he could attempt to reassert the facts, Tome butt in.

     “So, what are you going to do about it?” she said, giving Hanazawa an indecipherable look. It might not have been indecipherable. But if it weren’t, Mob certainly couldn’t tell. 

     “We are going to ex-or-cize the excavation,” Hanazawa replied, thoroughly enunciating every consonant and adding, in creative locations, a few diphthongs. 

     “It’ll be for the public good. I’m sure you’ve seen how things are going lately.” He returned Tome’s untranslatable stare, this time with a healthy helping of condescension. 

     Mob wished, on occasion, that the human condition came with a carefully numbered guide, if only so that he knew whether to defuse or remain silent in semi-volatile situations such as these.

     Tome fixed her eyes on the dirt. Then, after a moment’s deliberation, she lifted them to face Hanazawa.

     “It’s settled then. I’m coming with you.”

     “Good, I’m glad you understa— you’re what ?” 

     “Are you deaf? I said I’m coming along. I’ve had to subside off only the most meager paranormal fare working under Reigen. I’m dying of boredom, and this looks like an escape from purgatory. When was the last time something interesting happened around here, anyway?”

     Mob paused to allocate her question some genuine consideration.

     “There was that man last month who came here with a flute and offered to rid Seasoning of a plague of squirrels.”

     “Well, yes, there was that,” Tome conceded.

     “And then a few blocks of Mayo Parkway mass hallucinated a thanksgiving day parade even though we don’t have thanksgiving here.”

     “Okay, that too.”

     “Don’t forget the spate of spontaneous combustions in September,” Hanazawa chimed in. Mob nodded. “Or the giant hornets—”

     “All right, all right, I get it. We live in one of the most densely weird places on earth and you’d have to be stupid to expect a reprieve from it,” Tome snapped. “But that doesn’t mean anything. When was the last big thing you can remember?”

     Mob knew perfectly well what the last big thing was. Nine months had passed and he still didn’t like to think about it. Hanazawa was also acutely aware of Seasoning’s previous major disaster. They sat together for a brief moment of shared reticence. Then Mob opened his mouth.

     “I guess Claw was a while ago now,” he said slowly.

     Tome nodded. “Precisely. This is exactly why I ought to join you; it might be years before anything this cool happens again.” She spun on her heels and set off in the direction of the Soy Sauce district, sparing them a quick glance when she didn’t hear ensuing footsteps.

     “Shouldn’t we be going?. We haven’t got all day,” Tome said, tapping the pavement impatiently with her foot.

     Mob frowned. “It’ll be dangerous if you go with us. For you, I mean. There’s too many spirits,” he said.

     And there it was again. The feeling as though he’d missed some crucial detail, some essential piece of an all-encompassing puzzle that he’d knocked underneath the sofa and was on the brink of discovering; if he could figure out how to work the flashlight, that was. 

     Behind his carefully tempered expression, the gears hadn’t stopped turning. They’d churned quietly for the duration of their outing, inching towards a solid conclusion. Now they were picking up pace. 

     The excavation spanned miles of underground igneous caverns, encompassing the entirety of an early Kamakura period settlement. It was too much territory to snuff out neatly.

     What else had died besides people?

     Entirely unconcerned with the inner machinations of Mob’s psyche, Tome eyeballed him incredulously.

     “Mob, I’ve been to space. With aliens. Real ones.”

     “But they weren’t dangerous—”

     “Here’s another example; Remember that exorcism you showed up for at the last moment? I was in peril then, but behold! Not dead!” Tome said, waggling her still-material fingers. “Besides, if anything bad were to happen, I’m sure you’d rush in to protect a delicate flower like myself.” She batted her eyelashes.

     “I don’t think delicate’s the right word,” Mob said.

     “And I think flower’s a bit of a reach at best—”

     “Let’s not argue over epithets,” Tome said quickly.

     “Here’s how I see it; you’re the most powerful psychic I know, and Hanazawa is at least a five.”

     “On what scale, exactly?” Hanazawa inquired.

     “In a city-wide paranormal catastrophe such as this,” Tome said, ignoring him, “I imagine the safest place I could possibly be is wherever you two are. So I’m coming with. No further arguments.” She stamped her foot for emphasis. It landed with a squelch.

     Tome looked down.

     Where the walkway had previously been parched, rivulets of silty water trickled through gaps in the pavement.

     The river was flooding.

     After three hours of redirection, the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection loomed disappointingly up ahead. Reigen strode down the hallway and seized the handle protruding from its door. 

     It had been a long afternoon. It had also been a long morning, spent printing necessary documents at the post office with only Serizawa for company. If Reigen hadn’t done his research, it very well may have been longer.

     It occurred to him several times over his voyage through the local trade register that malicious compliance was only really worth it when you dealt considerable damage—psychological or otherwise—to the person you were complying with. Applying for and receiving a street vendor’s permit would hardly harm the Japanese bureaucracy, nor would it deter its faithful servants. This hadn’t stopped him yet.

     Halfway through the application process, around the time when Reigen left the courier’s desk with three inches worth of painstakingly wrought legal information under his arm, a grim layer of determination settled over him like marine snow in a benthic zone. He was getting this license. He had wasted too much time by then to not get this license, and in Reigen’s eyes the sunk cost fallacy was something that happened to other people.

     He pushed the door open. In the same manner as a squire carrying his knight’s appurtenances into the heat of battle, Serizawa followed warily behind him.

     The inside of the waiting room reeked of stale air. Most of the trade register had a distinctly static feel. The furniture that had kept up with the passage of time was sterilely chic and, in some cases, actively hostile to human life. This was the sort of office that desperately wanted you out of it.

     Towards the left was an open queue. Reigen stepped into line.

     A desiccated face emerged from behind the counter. Reigen peered at the name tag attached somewhere below it, and decided it was safe to assume that ‘Sandy’ was female. He cleared his throat.

     “Excuse me, Ma’am?”

     “Yes?” said a voice somewhere between a serial chainsmoker and a remnant of the Triassic.

     With a smack, Reigen shifted the stack of credentials out of Serizawa’s arms and onto the counter.

     “We’re here to submit a request for a vendor’s permit. I’m sure you’ll find all our paperwork is in order,” Reigen said, with a smile borrowed from years working customer service plastered across his face.

     The lady behind the counter, who had been honing her customer disservice skills since before Reigen was born, dragged his papers over for further inspection. Every now and then she would pause partway through the stack to tease a pair of stuck-together documents open with a gnarled acrylic claw.

     Once she’d finished, she looked up and fixed Reigen with a dull, watery stare.

    “You’re missing form twenty-seven B stroke six,” the lady rasped.

    Serizawa watched as his employer’s eyelid twitched its first step into a now familiar stricture.

    “I really think we aren’t,” Reigen said, customer service smile straining under considerable pressure. “The seven bureaus we visited before this one made sure everything was in order. They were very firm about making sure everything was in order, and I’m certain the wonderful people working in this building wouldn’t make a mistake like that. Maybe you didn’t check thoroughly enough?”

     The lady gave them a withering glare. Ceremoniously, she pried her way through the pile, running her finger underneath the title of each form. After reaching the bottom she grinned at Reigen with a sort of smug satisfaction.

     “Checked. It’s not there. Your application’s invalid.”

     Reigen’s smile splintered.

     He took a deep breath. He’d wasted nine hours already; succumbing to the throes of defeat now would just make this an even greater exercise in futility. Steadying his nerves, Reigen lifted the paperwork from the counter and tucked it under his arm.     

     He really had an admirable countenance, Serizawa thought. Most people just gave up when faced with the soul-crushing reality of civil servitude.

    Unaware of his employee’s plaudits, Reigen collected himself. 

     “All right,” Reigen said. “Where can I find a twenty-seven B stroke six?”

     The lady nodded. She relaxed. After suffering a minor disturbance, the bureaucratic machine had returned to full working order. 

     She retrieved a notecard from somewhere behind her side of the counter to write down directions. As she reached for a pen the emergency sirens set themselves off for the second time that day, blaring impotently against whatever disaster was currently stretching the definition of emergency.

     Serizawa opened the blinds at the far end of the waiting room.

     Pieces of cutlet drifted past on the street below, buoyed by a few inches of turgid water. He turned back, glancing imploringly at Reigen. 

     Peering out the window, Reigen thoughtfully scratched the side of his cheek. Several seconds passed in silence. Finally, he opened his mouth to present Serizawa with the results of his poignant introspection.

     “That doesn’t look good.”

     Serizawa nodded. It certainly didn’t.

     Reigen paced in an extremely localized circle. Somewhere in the background, a pen scratched diligently against a piece of stationary. Then he stopped in front of the window.

     “Does this affect us? Immediately?”

     Serizawa shook his head. Reigen exhaled.

     “All right then. In that case, I doubt there’s any good reason for us to evacuate. We’ll stay put for now.”

     “That sounds like a nice plan. Er, one question?” said Serizawa, considering the landscape outside.

     “What is it?”

     “Should the water be rising that quickly?”

     Tome sprinted up the artificial hill, her loafers catching in the already porous soil. Slipping as he went, Mob struggled along behind her. 

     Below them, the water level swelled a few more inches, buoying itself closer to ground zero. The lower banks were already submerged, caught up in the alluvial flow. What patches of unmarred landscape remained were crescendoing from a vernal prelude into a full-blown ardent symphony. Accelerating stalks of wheat nipped at Hanazawa’s heels as he scrambled onto the walkway. His sandals scraped against the gravel, offsetting his balance. Mob offered him a steadying hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Hanazawa took it.

     “This is it, isn’t it?” Tome shouted. “It’s all those spirits who’re doing this, right? Let’s melt them off this mortal coil already!” 

     She stumbled on a rock before righting herself and continuing on her way to higher ground. Mob bounded after her, Hanazawa in tow.

     By the time they’d made it back into the city, the water was up to their calves. Tome ducked under the awning of a hastily abandoned storefront. She waved her hand at the motion-activation sensor sentried over its sliding glass doors and dashed inside, letting the river pour in behind her.

     To the left of the cash register lay a wall of off-season sports equipment. Tome wrenched a baseball bat from an overstuffed bin and hefted it over her shoulder. A set of catcher’s gear made for a makeshift suit of armor. After further consideration, she shoved a layer of tinfoil from the kitchenware display inside her helmet. 

     Mob lingered in the doorway. He felt that he ought to say something, he just wasn’t sure what.

     Before he could formulate a response, Hanazawa cleared his throat.

     “What are you doing?”

      Tome blinked. “You said it yourselves. It’s dangerous in there, and I want as much insurance as I can possibly get before we dive into the heart of the problem. Speaking of which,” Tome said, rummaging in the front pocket of her school jacket.

     She pulled out a stack of scribbled on nametags with absolutely unwarranted prices drawn around their edges. Tome peeled a few off and stuck them on her bat.

     They stared. She shrugged. “They’re supposed to be spiritual wards. I pocketed them off of Reigen; they can’t hurt.”

     “You’re shoplifting,” Mob said. It wasn’t a question.

     Tome clucked her tongue. “Not shoplifting, borrowing . There’s a difference. I have no intention of keeping these.”

     She fiddled with the edge of a nametag, desperate to focus on anything that wasn’t Mob’s expression. “Will you stop looking at me like that? I’m going to put them back afterwards. I don’t even play baseball.”

     At that, Mob relaxed. It was all right if she really wasn’t going to steal them, he supposed.

     His eyes drifted towards the hardware aisle. Tentatively, Mob selected an industrial strength flashlight and swore to return it later. His experience with caves was limited. One might even say it was nonexistent. But he did know that they were rarely well-lit, and he wanted to be prepared.

     Hanazawa, who had been perusing the cutlery section, shook his head and stepped away from the shelving. He was already perfectly prepared by virtue of being himself.

     Armed, adroit, and several other apposite adjectives, the three of them stepped out into the dappled sunset. It wasn’t dappled earlier. Mob looked up.

     Above their heads, the local flora had exploded into an urban rainforest. Towering dandelions swayed in the breeze, discarding seeds onto the newly christened floodplains below. Tome dipped her bat experimentally in the water. A school of minnows diverted themselves around it. They looked at each other, then shrugged. 

     They waded through the streets. A few overeager pedestrians had bust out their rafts and were paddling down the motorway. Others held their valuables over their heads as their neighbors above ground level chatted with similarly lofty residents. 

     It hadn’t taken long for Seasoning’s inhabitants to lean into the chaos. Every previous blow to their fragile sense of normalcy had been a step towards acclimation. None of this was supposed to happen in a Japanese city in mid-November, or in a world that obeyed the elementary laws of physics, but they’d ignored things greater than a measly total disruption of natural order. There were only screams every few minutes now, and you really had to listen to hear them.

     Hanazawa kicked his sandals through the murk, dragging silt in a bow wave behind him. He squinted up at a street sign and motioned for them to turn left. They were nearing the excavation.

     As they trudged onwards, Mob remembered what was nagging at him in the convenience store. He turned towards Tome.

     “Why the tinfoil?”

     “Hm? Everyone knows why you use tinfoil.”

     “I don’t.”

     “Well, do you remember our electromagnetics unit?”

     Mob grimaced. He did.

     “It’s sort of based off of that principle with metal and energy and electrons. Y’see, when a brainwave—alien or otherwise—hits your tinfoil helmet,” Tome said, tapping the side of her skull. It crinkled. “The ray spreads all along the outside, making sure it can’t penetrate your head and make you subject to their will.”

     “Whose?”

     “What?”

     “Whose will?”

     “Dunno. In this case, probably the vengeful spirits inside that hole. They’re doing a poor job of exacting vengeance, though. It’s just kind of weird.”

     “I don’t think it’s vengeance.”

     “Eh?”

    Mob stopped in his tracks. His friends splashed backwards once they’d realized he wasn’t catching up. 

     “It’s not vengeance,” he said again, carefully, as though testing the words out for the first time.

     He’d seized the flashlight now. The final puzzle piece was his, and all Mob had to do was jam it in the right place.

     He looked around, taking in the remnants of cutlet bowls, the distinctly fertile composition of the water below, the lush greenery hanging overhead; all of which—through an older and less urbanized set of eyes—could’ve been seen as blessings. Mob let it click into place. Then, he inspected the final picture. 

     Tome and Hanazawa exchanged glances as he fumbled for words. They were well aware that their friend was one of the slower trains in the station. Not that they valued him any less for it, but moments like these were not uncommon. When Mob was this emphatic about something he wanted to say, however, it was probably worth listening to. They waited.

     After a dozen seconds, he spoke.

     “It’s not spirits, either. Not human ones, at least. I don’t know what to call it. I haven’t personally dealt with something like this before. But we shouldn’t treat it like a regular case,” Mob said. 

     “We should be cautious. Extra cautious,” he finished firmly, while managing to clear nothing up whatsoever. 

     Tome twisted the handle of her bat with her fingers. The evening sizzled. While they were focusing on more immediately pressing issues, Seasoning’s unseasonable weather had only intensified. It frizzled the edges of Tome’s hair that stuck out from beneath her helmet, agitated by the humidity. She bit down on her inner lip. 

     Caution was not her forte. If Tome was going to act with any sort of deliberation, she had better have a good reason to do so. She opened her mouth.

     “If it’s not human spirits, then what is it?”

     Mezato hacked through the underbrush with the only surviving setting on her swiss army knife, pushing the tattered foliage aside. Clipped to the front of her uniform, her pocket recorder fought to function under the mounting condensation. She’d left it running ever since the taxi dropped her and Emi off a few blocks from the Soy Sauce District. 

     Mezato’s motto—one among many mottos, all of them equally sententious—was that talk was cheap, so saving up as much talk as possible in case of a market explosion was the safest way to go. 

     Now her recorder whirred gently in the heat. Gasping for breath, Emi came crashing to a halt behind her. She held her shoes above her head, socks balled inside their toes. The water lapped at their ankles. It sloshed around Mezato’s soles, and she wondered belatedly why she hadn’t thought of doing that first.

     She flicked the corkscrew back into its casing and passed it to Emi, giving it a little pat beforehand. Her multitool had served her well.

     Emi held it for a second. Then, when Mezato wasn’t looking, she tossed it into the water and watched it float downstream. 

     They stood in front of a definitely illegal hole torn in the side of the chain link fence that cordoned off the excavation. 

     Emi didn’t want to know how Mezato knew about it. Emi also did not want to know about how Mezato had possibly cut it out herself, and she desperately wanted to avoid learning at all costs the kinds of legal trouble it could get them into. This didn’t stop the answers from supplying themselves.    

     She took a breath.

     “Could you please tell me what we’re supposed to be doing her—”

     She was abruptly cut off by a finger pressed against her lips. Mezato turned around, holding one up to her own mouth as well. She peeled the severed metal aside and pulled Emi through.

     Rather than dropping off ominously, the river sluiced into smaller and smaller tributaries until it trammeled to a halt at the mouth of the cavern. 

     Whatever lay inside didn’t seem to mind the vegetation, however. Mezato scrolled through her photos from the previous night and compared them to the situation at hand. There was considerable growth. 

     Something else was in the air now, too. An electrically vital hum hung around the excavation, teeming with life. Mezato didn’t pay it any mind; it was most likely one of the logical byproducts of achieving her dreams. After years of journalistic obscurity, she was finally going to take her rightful place as a footnote in the annals of history.

     “Emi,” she breathed, “we are, as of this moment, standing on the cusp of greatness. Once we cover this scene we will be well over it. Do you have anything to say to mark the occasion?”

     Emi thought for a minute.

     “I guess this is pretty cool. I don’t think that publishing a story about it to the school newspaper is going to make you famous, though. Do we even actually have a school newspaper? You can’t print one in a shed, right? Oh, and there’s mud in my toes. You can write that down too.”

     There were some people in this world, Mezato decided, who had no proportionate sense of awe whatsoever and would not be mentioned, no matter how hard they begged, during her sixty minutes interview.

     She turned aside and peered through the foliage, her eyes veering into the abyss.

     “It’s the ghost of a dead city,” Mob said. 

     “And it isn’t angry. Or at least it wasn’t angry earlier. I’m not so sure now.”

     Mezato didn’t have time to record what she saw. She hardly had time to focus on anything, because it was right around then that the music started.

Chapter Text

For a moment, Mob and his entourage fell silent. Then, doing what most moments of quiescence did when faced with either Tome or Hanazawa, it fled the scene to make way for rancorous exclamation. 

     They spoke in unison:

     “A dead what? ”

     “City. A dead city,” Mob replied.

     Tome shook her head. “No, you can’t kill a city. That’d be stupid,” she said. The words sounded less certain once she’d said them.

     “..you can’t, right?” Tome added tentatively.

     “Actually, I think I understand,” Hanazawa said. Tome gave him an affronted look before remembering that she also wanted to know how it worked. She postponed hurling invective for the time being so he could get on with it.

     “It’s like a cell, isn’t it?” Hanazawa continued. “If you kill a cell, you don’t mourn the mitochondria. You say that the whole thing died. And a city’s a bit like a microorganism, right? All the little parts working with and against each other and whatnot. So if you kill off an entire city, an entire culture, all in one fell swoop..”

     He stopped. Luckily, he didn’t need to keep going. They were all quietly filling in the blanks.

     Tome took a moment to adjust her worldview. Then she shook her head again, not entirely convinced.

     “Okay. So you can kill a city; that doesn’t explain why everything’s gone to shit. Just because it’s a big ghost doesn’t mean that it should affect all of Seasoning.”

     Mob harriedly fished an allegory from their shared puddle of recollection. 

     “It’s like..well, no. It isn’t like that. It’s.. it’s like Saruta’s tomatoes!” 

     Tome stared at him blankly.

    “Did he not tell you about those? That’s okay. It isn’t too hard to explain. Picture.. a box,” said Mob, absentmindedly tracing one with his fingers, “but it’s a box that you put plants in, I think to protect them from deer? And you’re only supposed to put so many in because otherwise it’s too many and they won’t have enough space to grow. But because everything else is okay they grow anyway and it doesn’t go well, except the plants are specifically tomatoes because Saruta said they were tomatoes.”

     Tome and Hanazawa meditated on this until it was semi-comprehensible. Then, like twin gyroscopes, they righted themselves and resumed spinning along the conversation.

     “So what you’re saying is that Seasoning is a box?” Hanazawa said. 

     Mob furrowed his brow in contemplation. “No, it looks a bit like a shrimp on maps.”

     “What I mean is that it’s the box in your metaphor,” Hanazawa quickly amended.   

     “Oh! Yes. Yes it is,” said Mob, relieved.

     “Right. So the box is Seasoning, and the correct number of tomato plants is the background noise.”

     “The hell do you mean by background noise?” said Tome.

     “It’s a psychic thing I could tell you about but it’d take too much time. Basically when you have a certain amount of people in close quarters, their residual energy has a minor effect on the area they’re in. There’s probably an equation for it that I’ve neglected to derive,” Hanazawa said dismissively.

     Mob nodded. “Yes. And the extra plants are.. the excavation, I’m pretty sure,” he said uncertainly, struggling to understand his own analogy. “And now it’s stacked on top of current Seasoning, blending in with the regular background noise. Which is why I couldn’t tell what it was earlier. There’s too much energy. It had to find an outlet. It still needs to find an outlet.”

     Adjusting the tinfoil sheet crammed between her head and helmet, Tome pondered his revelation. 

     “That’s all well and good, but why like this?” 

      Mob paused.

     “I have no idea,” he admitted.

     “No, wait, never mind. I think I’ve got it,” Tome said, brushing him aside. “I don’t think Seasoning hates its people. I mean yes, they do go around blowing it up pretty often and we have more terrorist organizations than you could count on one hand—”

     “Not anymore,” Hanazawa cut in.

     “You know what? I’m not going to ask. Anyway, a city shouldn’t hate its citizens. That’s just wrong. What’s happening here,” Tome said, gesturing to the havoc at large, “is that it’s trying to do a nice thing for us but failing miserably since the part of it that’s got any consciousness is nearly a thousand years old. I mean, look at this: flooding riverbanks, extemporaneous growing seasons,”

     “Rains of fish,” Mob supplied.

     “Precisely! All of that’s stuff a bunch of peasants in a village would’ve wanted before we had an industrial age. It’s like when your mother buys you something you liked when you were four as a birthday present because she has no idea what you’re into now.”

     “Parents do that?” said Hanazawa.

     The expression Tome gave him wasn’t particularly sorrowful, but picked instead from a more run-of-the-mill variety of desolation.

     “I’m not addressing that either. This conversation would take too long if I did. Moving on, you said something changed, didn’t you, Mob?”

     “Mhm. I can’t really explain it, but the aura’s different somehow? Sort of a frustrated feeling.”

     Tome nodded sagely. “I see. It must be getting fed up with nobody appreciating what it does for them.”

     “I guess so,” Mob said, fiddling with the switch on his flashlight. It had no effect. He’d neglected to borrow batteries while they were in the store. Looping its lanyard around his wrist and jamming a finger into the battery chamber, he extended an experimental tendril of psychic power. It flickered to life, illuminating the brackish stream below.

    Content enough with this state of affairs, he resumed facing his friends. 

     “However it feels and for whatever reason, it’s getting aggressive. We should keep going before it gets worse.” His eyes drifted towards Tome’s hastily decorated weaponry. “Oh, but before we do, can I see that?”

     Tome shrugged, relinquishing control of her bat. The curse wards were already peeling at the edges. Mob smoothed them down and held it level in his hands. He concentrated. 

     Even Tome, whose psychic capabilities only existed en potentia in an ongoing Microsoft Word document heavily ensconced in protective folders on her laptop, felt something shift in the air. Her teeth buzzed with substatic electricity. 

     Mob’s aura fluttered, splaying his hair in a haggard halo around his head. After a few seconds, he lowered the bat, apparently satisfied. He held it out to Tome.

     “Here. I’ve put some of my powers inside. You’ll be able to protect yourself better now.”

     Tome examined its surface. Nothing was noticeably different, save for her own confidence in its bludgeoning capabilities. The only thing cooler than a blunt instrument was a psychically imbued blunt instrument. 

     “Thank you. I really do appreciate the.. assistance…”

     Her words faltered, tumbling to a halt after tripping on an errant set of ellipses. Tome looked up past the canopy and into the wilting sunset. Mob and Hanazawa followed her gaze. Then her head jerked downwards. Then around, searching for some unseen adversary. Bewildered, they tried to keep up. 

     Another dozen seconds or so passed in the throes of unspecified hysteria. Mob cleared his throat.

     “Are you looking for something?”

     Tome whipped around. “Can’t you hear it?”

     Mob turned to Hanazawa, who shrugged and shook his head. 

     “No. What is it?”

     “It’s music, but it doesn’t sound like any sort of music I’ve ever heard.” 

     To Tome, it sounded like if you described music to someone who’d never listened to it and told them to write a song based off that, and they went and put their entire heart and soul into it, and still managed to irreparably fuck the whole thing up. The melody skipped along to an offkey sort of wheedle-wheedle-wheep . She grit her teeth and pressed her thumbs into her ears, attempting to fend off the noise that was still, to the rest of them, infuriatingly inaudible.

     “And I can’t tell who’s playing it or where it’s coming from. It feels like it’s coming from everywhere.” She dug her thumbs in further. “It’s making my brain itch, too.”

     Mob cupped a hand around his ear and turned it on the world. He heard nothing, but the air was thicker than it had been half a minute ago. The same filmy static from when the sky split open buzzed over his skin. Something else had come over him, too. It was kicking at his skull right then, trying to get him to notice it.

     He turned towards the street. It was silent. It shouldn’t have been silent. Seasoning’s population stood still, enraptured by the music.

     There was a splash. Someone had moved. 

     Like an avalanche emboldened by the first pebble spilling forth onto the cliff face below, the crowd surged through the streets, all pivoting on a central bearing.

     Mob’s sense of direction rarely passed muster, even in bounds of his own city. But he didn’t need it to figure out where they were going. He knew, with dreadful certainty, exactly where Seasoning’s people were headed.

     It was the only place left to go.

A crowd, or a mob, if it’s feeling self-referential, is no more intelligent than the forces driving it. The individual components rarely get a say in the action. Luckily enough, most of them don’t want to. They’re too busy finding out what everyone else is doing so they can get a shot at it too, personal opinions drowned out in a torrent of the indomitable, easily distracted human spirit. 

     Inukawa’s own desires felt particularly ignored as he broke away from the GameStop he and his friends were window-shopping at, letting the sense of urgency the music generated pull him into the fray.

     He wasn’t sure why he was moving. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Everyone else was moving, so it must have had some merit. 

     There was the music, too. Music wasn’t quite the right word for it, but it possessed an unusually beautiful quality; something you couldn’t find in typical choreographed sound. It dragged a piece of your soul along with it. 

    Whoever was playing spun sound so that it wrapped up your consciousness on a spool, so that there was nothing but the movement of the crowd and a longing to get closer to its ineffable source, so that you didn’t notice the hand tugging on your sleeve, or how it drew back behind its owner and aimed..

    Takenaka’s palm met Inukawa’s face, forcibly jolting him from his reverie. 

     “What the hell was that for?” Inukawa hissed, rubbing his cheek. “I didn’t do anything to deserve that. I didn’t do anything in recent memory to deserve that.”

     “You didn’t hear me yelling in your head, so I panicked,” Takenaka said.

     “You were yelling in my head?”

     “See what I mean?”

     “It was still rude,” said Inukawa grudgingly.

     “I’m not saying it wasn’t. Worked, though. You’re not loping anymore.”

     Inukawa rubbed his cheek again, slightly more emphatically this time, but decided to give it up. There was no point in arguing over petty injuries when there were larger things afoot. 

     Now that his mind was clear, a few developments immediately made themselves prevalent. Firstly, the music had transformed from glorious euphony into a sort of disjointed, tuneless pulsing. Inukawa wished desperately that he could put the rose-tinted headphones back on. If he did, then he might stop feeling tempted to unscrew his skull and remove his brain from its casing just so he could scratch it.

     Secondly, Saruta was gone. This was also not good.

     Because picking their friend out from the swarm currently thronging the mud-addled streets would prove impossible, Inukawa decided to focus on the former. He shook his head and faced Takenaka.

     “You can hear it, right?”

     “Hear what?”

     “The-well, it was music. Now it’s just fucking awful. You really don’t hear it? It’s everywhere.”

     Takenaka frowned. “No. Not at all. Is that what you were walking towards?”

     “I guess?”

     “All right. That’s good.”

     “How could that possibly be a good thing?”

     “Because it means we’ve got a source, that’s how. Could be a telepath,” Takenaka mused. “Could definitely be a telepath. It’d make sense, given how weird things’ve been, if it’s something psychic. Kind of an asshole thing to do, though.”

     “Said the kettle to the pot.”

     “Hm?”

     “Nothing. Anyway, that doesn’t make sense. You’d be able to hear a telepath. So it’s probably not that.”

     “Yeah. Probably not.” Takenaka sighed. It came out shaky. The ordinary soap of crowd-induced paranoia was being lathered into a proper panic. Currently anything psychic was suspect, a category which happened to include most of their close friends as well as Takenaka himself. The natural order of public spaces has been well and truly upset, there was water soaking up to their mid-shins, and to top it off, Saruta was still missing. 

“Got any idea where Saruta went?” Inukawa said, voice wavering perceptibly.

“I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Well? Where do you think he is?”

“Where else?” Takenaka snapped. He jabbed his index finger in the direction of the swarm, who were emptying the sidewalks at a concerning rate. “I couldn’t grab him in time, so he’s gone off in the same direction as those morons.”

“We should probably go and find him.”

“We probably should.”

“Yeah. It’d probably be the right thing to do.”

“Yep.”

“Mhm.”

“...”

“...”

“Inukawa?”

“Yes?”

“Any chance you’d be willing to lead the way?

In a peacefully uninformed living room several miles to the west, Ritsu paused from screwing in the switchboard of a pinball machine so he could figure out what the ping his phone just made was supposed to be.

     He opened the notification. His eyes scrolled down the page. Then they flew back to the top and scrolled again, just to make sure they’d read it correctly.

     Ritsu shot up from the terrycloth they’d laid down and ran towards the garage, almost slipping on the recently installed floors. Somewhere behind him, Shou was yelling his name. He didn’t stop. He was spurred on by the horrible knowledge one possesses when they know exactly who their brother is and what he can manage.

     Lonely is the road that an adversary of neighborhood construction policy treads.

     Masaru Takahashi was treading it at that very moment, from the vantage of a respectable lawn chair on his front porch. For most of his adulthood he’d abstained from voicing his opinions in the public sector out of the belief that the only people who did so were either hooligans or politicians, and the line was thin. But he’d always felt that the world at large ought to be more ashamed of itself and the decisions it made. Masaru Takahashi had been waiting his entire life for a suitable hill to die on. Fortunately for him, one had presented itself at the neighborhood committee meeting last week.

     The chairman had opened the issue near its close, to the relief of everyone present, who were looking to finish things off with a subject that would no doubt garner a unanimous vote.

     It was a simple proposal; the kids who played baseball in the neighborhood park had to leave as soon as the sun set, so one member of the board suggested that they install lights. Everyone raised their hands to vote aye, with the enthusiasm of a group of people who know that if they do, they will be allowed to go early.

     But Masaru Takahasi felt an opinion bubbling up from underneath the crystallized surface of his mind. Worse than that, he felt a responsibility . With vicious passion, he decried their decision, bringing up the damage that running lights for a few hours after dark would deal to the local ecosystem, and how dare they suggest a solution that would impinge on property owners’ rights not to close their blinds in the evening?

     To their horror, the majority of the board saw a few of their more pliable members agreeing .

     Within the span of seven days, they’d managed to concoct a full-fledged campaign. Masaru Takahashi, valiant crusader for the rights of those who pay their taxes and ought to have a say in things, was dismayed to find that he lacked a lawn to picket with. He would’ve been protesting on a street corner if not for his daughter.

     Aside from a few years in her childhood where she’d insisted that she saw things that were not there, she was a fairly sensible young woman. And she’d told Masaru that it might be a good idea not to go outside today. So he’d sat on his front porch with a stack of pamphlets and a sign propped against the door instead. (The Persimmon district residents’ committee anti-illumination subcommittee had spent the better half of a week coming up with a slogan. They’d eventually settled on Neighborhoods Need Night, which, unfortunately, speaks volumes about the average local political effort’s creativity.)

     So far none of the pedestrians had taken any interest. In fact, they’d all seemed rather single-minded, despite the slowly rising water lapping at their calves. Masaru disapproved. From a distance. There was something unsettling about their congregation that he didn’t want to observe close up.

Somebody was splashing towards his left. Masaru sat to attention, pamphlets at the ready. 

     Down the motorway came that weird girl from across the street, flanked by two unfamiliar young men as they drew a wake in the murky water. One of them was wearing an outfit that Masaru would’ve wholeheartedly condemned if he knew what he was supposed to be condemning. It seared the eyes.

     Masaru squinted through the pain and hollered.

     “Tome Kurata!”

     “Can’t talk!” Tome yelled. “I don’t have time!”

     He remained undeterred. Summoning every last ounce of righteousness he could muster, Masaru followed in the fine tradition of curmudgeonly middle-aged neighbors worldwide.

     “Do your parents know that you’re out at a time like this?”

     “No, but I don’t think they’d mind! I really can’t stop! Goodbye!”

     And with that, they disappeared around the bend. Masaru clucked his tongue and reclined in his chair. The youth of today had no respect for anyone. He’d seen those boys she was with whispering before they left, probably about adolescent counterculture. Masaru would have to submit a complaint about riffraff at the next committee gathering.

     He was reorganizing his pamphlets when a second set of footsteps slopped down the street.

     A respectable businessman carrying another respectable businessman in an entirely unrespectable piggyback slid to a halt as his cargo waved an urgent hand in front of his face.

     “Excuse me,” said the slightly gauche blonde one on top, who had maneuvered himself so he could lean as far outwards as possible without actually falling off. “Would you happen to know the fastest route from here to the Soy Sauce District? I’m afraid we’ve lost track of our GPS.” 

     He smiled wanly. Everything about him oozed grease. Or oil. Snake oil, to be precise. Salesmen like him were another item on the mile long list of things that Masaru Takahashi considered to be an affront against public decency. But as a member of the community, he had a duty.    

     “Er, yes,” Masaru faltered. “You take a left here, continue down Cauliflower-dori for a quarter mile, make a sharp right at the corner store with the picture of an octopus in the window, walk through the park across the street(which, if you wouldn’t mind taking a pamphlet, you could help preserve for future generations, and I’m sure it would be no trouble to you to vote for it in the upcoming community issues selectional), turn sixty degrees clockwise when you come across the house with a ripped off gutter, continue for another quarter mile or so, turn onto Basil-odori, and you ought to arrive right on its doorstep.”         

     “Is that it now?” Reigen said. “Well, thank you very much.” 

     In a quieter voice, he muttered into Serizawa’s ear : “Did you catch any of that?

     “Not in the slightest.”

     “Damn.”

     “Don’t worry. I should be able to find it. It’s like looking for a haystack in a needle.”

     “Thank you again,” Reigen said, sopra voce. “We’ll be on our way now.”

     Remembering the agenda he was supposed to be pushing, Masaru fumbled for a pamphlet. “Before you go, would you like to take an interest in our cause?”

     But they’d already left. He shook his head in shame. The working class of today had no respect for anyone either.

     Masaru Takahashi was considering packing up and going inside. The sun setting hadn’t affected him, since he was trying to prove a point, but being snubbed so thoroughly twice in a row had put a dent in his resolve. 

     Plus, parts of the sidewalk had begun to levitate. Masaru wasn’t entirely up-to-date on local zoning laws, but he was fairly certain that concrete wasn’t supposed to hop up and walk away.

     He stretched the protective rubber band around his pamphlets. Something whirred in the distance.

     Masaru turned around just in time to meet the wake of a motorbike as it accelerated past him, spattering both his work shirt and the unlaminated cardboard of his picket sign with muck.

     “ Hooligans! ” Masaru screamed.

     A few minutes later, after he’d finished wiping off the face of his campaign, the motorcyclist backpedaled towards his porch at a slower pace. Now with enough time to observe them, Masaru noticed that rather than a motorcycle they were riding a bicycle with a playing card stapled across the spokes for maximum rattling effect, that its chain was white-hot with friction, and that it was hovering two inches above the waterline. Its driver waved sheepishly. Behind him sat a second vandal wearing an incongruous student council armband and clutching on to the driver’s jacket for dear life.

“Hi,” said the one up front, pushing a shock of raffishly dyed hair back into place from where the wind had blown it. “We’re kind of lost. You happen to know where the Soy Sauce District is?”

     Their bike was floating. Surely they’d noticed. There was no way they couldn’t have noticed. Neither of them were aiming to do anything about it, however, and Masaru had been raised to believe that pointing out the obvious was impolite. Wordlessly, he raised a finger and gestured down the road.

     The driver grinned. “Thanks! It’s nasty out today, isn’t it? We’ve been able to avoid the worst of it so far, funnily enough. Hope you have the same luck!”

     He snapped his fingers. At that, the wheels began to churn independent of their pedals, which were starting to melt at the edges. Steam rose from the water beneath them. The bike lurched experimentally forwards. With complete disregard for Newtonian physics it soared from a stop to full speed in an instant, leaving just as suddenly as it came.

     “That might be because your bike isn’t touching the ground!” Masaru yelled after them. 

     Right now he had loftier goals in mind. But when some policy, some plebiscite, any ordinance of law that could prohibit this practice presented itself, he knew where his vote lay.

     Stiffly, he shoved his pamphlets under one arm and shut the door behind him.

     Masaru Takahashi was too busy drafting slogans at his kitchen table to see the final two stragglers pass by.

     Takenaka and Inukawa wouldn’t have bothered him anyway. They knew, with no small amount of reluctance, exactly where they were headed.     

     Mob sidled past an emptied food truck and over to where Tome had pressed herself against the wall of an office building. He wasn’t used to sidling. It didn’t come naturally to him. 

     Stealth felt like the right move, though. While the masses were unresponsive, they were also off-putting enough that Mob wanted to avoid contact with them for as long as was humanly possible. He sloshed surreptitiously to a halt in front of the brickwork. Tome yanked him closer.

“We’ve nearly infiltrated the core,” Tome whispered. “Only a few hundred feet more,” she said, pointing to the phone cupped discreetly against her jacket, “and we’ll be in. It’ll be crucial to.. look, can you get over here? It doesn’t have the right atmosphere if we’re not in a proper huddle.”

“It’s not my fault they keep falling down,” Hanazawa said, adjusting the cuffs of his acid-wash jeans. “The damn things are a pain to dry clean, too. Are you sure we need to huddle? I don’t think they can hear us. It doesn’t make sense to hide.”

     “It’s all about atmosphere. I thought you understood atmosphere,” Tome said drily. “Fine, all right. We’ll forego convention for the time being. Fat lot of good sticking to tone and established narrative standards ever did us, hm?”

     You could almost hear the sarcasm sail over his head as Hanazawa ducked to avoid it.

     “I’m glad you understand. Kageyama, do you have anything to say before we go inside? A battle plan, perhaps?”

     “Er.” Mob tried to remember if he’d learned anything about tactics over the past year before deeming the effort fruitless. “Not really. Just stay together, and try to be careful?”

     “That’s it? That’s really all you have planned out? We’re about to fight a ghost the size of a city and all you have to say is ‘stay with the group’?”

     “That’s a fantastic strategy,” Hanazawa cut in. “Too many an army has suffered defeat because they split up their ranks. Sun Tzu himself advised against splitting up small ranks in The Art of War. Which I’ve read. Multiple times.”      

     He smiled. “Besides, I’m sure we’ll be all right if we stick near you.”

     At that, Tome nodded. “Yeah. Speaking of which, do you want to lead the way? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s just that I’m not sure how to go about doing it.”

     Mob seized up under the full weight of reliability. He stepped past the corner before it could affect him further, clutching his hands sweatily to his sides. Leadership did not suit him, but there were times when a socially impaired middle schooler had to do what a man had to do.

     “Let’s go.”

     The leylines hung over Seasoning like great white roots left to cluster around the perforations in a cheap plastic pot for nourishment. Small fibres split off from the main trunks, latching on to the crowd about the excavation. Some of them pulsated as fragments of what was presumably life force were siphoned upwards and into the ground below. 

     “It’s feeding,” Mob whispered. “It must be working up to something.”

     “Like what?” Tome said.

     “I can’t tell.”

     “It shouldn’t worry us, since we’ll be done before any of that happens,” Hanazawa said, wriggling a hand between two members of the crowd to test the waters. “Look; they don’t mind. We can get in if we push.”

      It was one of, if not the most, claustrophobic advances in the history of amateur tactics. After copious amounts of squeezing, shoving, and eventually giving up and levitating themselves over the horde, they emerged on the other side.

      The sky had turned pitch black. This was mainly because there were so many forces competing to occlude it that even the most determined sliver of moonlight would choke to death on a mixture of tropical canopy, rubble, and other byproducts of emboldened supernatural activity before it could touch the ground.

     Mob turned his flashlight on the mouth of the cave.

     Embedded in the gravel lay the remnants of a battered Swiss Army knife. He nudged it with his toe and it broke free, merging with the stream before disappearing over the edge.

     They shimmied down in succession. From inside, whatever force was propelling Seasoning’s descent into more chaos than usual had stymied the flow of water. Teru’s sandals scraped against the parched earth as they crept into the jungle. 

      Unlike the floor, the air hung thick with condensation. Beads of it clung to their faces, mingling with sweat and making it difficult to breathe without gasping. There was an inspecific rumbling in the distance. And it smelled. It was, to Mob, not entirely dissimilar to taking the subway. 

      Pieces of distended construction equipment littered the cavern. An entire forklift sat abandoned next to the supplies the archaeologists had unloaded from it, headlights twinkling forlornly like a lost puppy’s eyes. Mob shook its image from his head and pressed on.

      The ground itself was decidedly more pliable than basalt had any right to be. Every few seconds it would heave upwards, then slowly decline until the roots littering its surface were level again. Occasionally, if Mob listened closely, he could hear what sounded unnervingly like a fourth person breathing.

     “That’s not you, is it?” Tome spoke out of the corner of her mouth.

     “No.”

     “Or you?”

     “Me neither,” Teru replied.

     She sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

     “Cheer up,” Teru said, not sounding particularly cheery himself. “We’re almost there. I can practically feel it.”

     Something rustled. They spun around.

     In a thicket of ferns illuminated by the flashlight sat a black lump. Accompanied by another one. And several other ones. An entire army of humanoid grotesques populated the underbrush, grinding slightly as they centered themselves around the disturbance. 

     “Like an army of white blood cells defending the hive..” Teru whispered.

     “White blood cells don’t have hives. That’s bees you’re thinking of.”

     “Shut up, they’re getting closer.”

     They were indeed. Mob scrambled backwards, only to find that his friends had the same idea. 

     Hanazawa’s jacket squeaked as it brushed against their uniforms. Behind him, Tome’s knuckles audibly popped as she squeezed her bat with enough force to cut off circulation.   

     “D’you think they’ve still got the bones inside?” she said.

     “I hope not,” said Mob, eyeing the encroaching examples of daily life in the Kamakura period. He wondered how useful they actually were as an educational tool. Surely people weren’t at their most candid when they were trying to avoid certain death by volcano?

     The first figure tumbled from the bushes. Hanazawa smacked it with his aura, breaking off one of its forearms.

     Resin splattered onto the ferns below. The grotesque shifted its head, considering the volcanic fragments that had moments ago been a part of its body. It let its arm droop. The larger shards flew back into place, cementing themselves with chloroplasm. Then it rose to its feet. 

     It was at that moment that Mob made an executive decision.

     “RUN FOR THE TRUCK!” he screamed.

     They scrambled through the underbrush, stopping only to trip on the occasional root protruding from the forest floor. Mob heaved himself into the forklift, making room for Tome and Hanazawa to pile into the back. 

     “All right, we’re here,” Tome wheezed. “Now what?”

     “I don’t know,” Mob admitted. “I didn’t plan that far. It just felt like the right decision.”

     “We have cover now, so that’s one thing in our favor,” Hanazawa said, adjusting his seat on the edge of the cab enclosure. He leaned over and ripped off the vines cluttering the dashboard.

     “We’re not going to have it for long,” Tome said, glancing at the assembled ranks of petrified warriors, who were approaching at an accelerated rate. “Let’s go. Fast.”

     Mob nodded. His friends gripped the forklift’s frame, bracing themselves. He slammed the pedal to the metal. Then he remembered who he was and held the car aloft with his ESP. The wheels whirred feverishly as they hovered above the treeline. For a moment, they hung on the precipice between peril and relative safety. They could flee now and let the boil fester until it oozed to its natural conclusion, or brave the difficult terrain ahead. And the jungle stretched on for much longer than the official 160 acre estimate.

     Mob seized the steering column and plunged in.