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Reigen Arataka woke up.
Ritsu was on his left side, Mob on his right. Mob had a leg over Reigen’s knees.
Reigen shifted his legs very slightly - they were feeling stiff - but he had no wish to wake up either brother.
Reigen breathed. In, out. There was a faint scent of shampoo and soap from their shower last night.
He really needed the bathroom.
Reigen shut his eyes and tried to ignore everything his senses were telling him.
There was silence, out here in the woods around Seasoning City. A bird called out; the small fridge whirred in the kitchen.
Reigen’s neighbors had been surprised, a few months ago, when Reigen had suddenly shuttered up Spirits and Such and gave notice that he was moving out of his apartment.
Reigen let the bullshit flow from his mouth, making sure his reasons at least roughly matched for each person. He had said that some distant relative needed his help, so he had to move out of Seasoning. It was vague enough to be untraceable.
Reigen heard them saying, oh how kind. How generous.
They had no idea of the truth.
Which was how Reigen liked it, after all, Ritsu had pointed out later, when they were away from Mob. Didn’t Reigen style himself the greatest psychic of the 21st century, without being able to read a thought or perform an exorcism by himself?
The actual Ritsu shifted. Reigen breathed evenly and deeply to pretend to be asleep.
“I know you’re awake,” Ritsu said before yawning and crawling over Reigen and Mob on the bed to walk to the bathroom.
Reigen blinked up at the ceiling. He had tried.
Mob woke up next to him, but he snuggled his head deeper into Reigen’s chest and didn’t move.
So Reigen waited.
Ritsu returned, looking more awake than he had before. “Big brother, Reigen, you can’t lie in bed this long. Hurry up.”
Mob slid his legs off Reigen and walked off.
Reigen stayed in bed, waiting for the brothers to finish using the bathroom.
He should get up, too.
Later, Reigen wandered out of the tiny bathroom to the kitchen. Mob and Ritsu were making breakfast.
“You’ll have to make your own,” Ritsu said.
“Ritsu!” Mob scolded him, before floating a plate of eggs on toast towards Reigen.
There was a little heart design made of egg yolk on the toast.
Reigen looked up from the plate to Mob, who was smiling at Reigen.
Reigen smiled back until Mob turned away, and then he sat down at the table and began to eat.
Ritsu and Mob soon joined him. The boys chatted to each other about little things; some wood they needed to chop today, how to get rid of an overflowing trash dumpster without making Reigen lug the whole thing to the nearest town.
Reigen felt their eyes on him sometimes, but he shoveled his food down. They were teenage boys; they didn’t think him rude for doing that.
Soon, he had run out of food. Reigen picked up the empty dishes from the table and set to work washing them.
Ritsu went out to chop wood and check that the old house they were squatting in hadn’t fallen down.
Mob got up, sliding his hands around Reigen’s waist as Reigen washed the pan Mob had used to make the eggs.
Mob buried his face in between Reigen’s shoulder blades. “Mmm.”
“You’ve grown taller…” Reigen said.
Reigen felt Mob’s powers fizz as Mob raised himself up higher, kissing the back of Reigen’s neck.
“I like your hair, Master,” Mob said, stroking it.
“Needs a trim,” Reigen grumbled.
Mob was silent, planting kisses all over the back of Reigen’s head.
Reigen finished washing the dishes, glancing outside at the trees with leaves turning brown and red.
Loud chopping sounds could be heard.
Ritsu soon arrived himself, lugging some wood. “This is the last of it for now, but we should be fine when it gets colder.”
“Well done, little brother!” Reigen felt Mob move away from him.
Reigen turned around from the sink.
Ever since Ritsu’s powers had exploded out of him in a student council meeting, destroying half of Salt Middle School and killing ten students, the Kageyama brothers had disappeared from Seasoning.
Ritsu had been caught on video by a girl with a digital camera as he screamed about killing them all, and then found himself attacking her with his powers too. It looked very deliberate to people who didn’t really know Ritsu.
So Mob had taken Ritsu and ran away.
Reigen had not expected to see either of them again. It had upset him more than he had first thought it would. Those boys with their powers had wormed their way into his life, more so Mob, but Ritsu too in his own way.
And besides, Ritsu had exploded when Mob had been out exorcising spirits with Reigen, after all. It was his goddamn fault that it had happened without an esper nearby to help contain Ritsu. When Mob and Reigen had heard what had happened, it had been too late.
Reigen had feelings about the whole situation that he didn't want to examine closely, or at all. It was best to ignore such things. So he went to work at his office on most days, offered massages and Himalayan salt ‘exorcisms’, and tried not to think about dark hair that was soft under his hands.
But now, there the brothers were, right in front of Reigen, smiling at each other as they arranged some chores in the isolated house they were squatting in.
The brothers had met up with Reigen in their turn, a week after the explosion - calling him out under another name to do an exorcism, and sitting in the middle of the abandoned factory for Reigen to find.
After that, he was easily persuaded to join them. They needed someone, an adult, who was not wanted for questioning by the police for their role in the Salt Middle School ‘bombing’. Someone who would buy food for them, who could drive them around as they hid.
Reigen had tried to tell them to do what he thought was the right thing. “Come back. They’ll see it was an accident.”
One glance at Ritsu’s expression and Reigen saw that that wouldn’t happen.
So Reigen had agreed. He owed them, after all; he owed the whole damn city for what had happened.
In the present, Ritsu’s little smile disappeared. “What was that noise?”
“It sounds like a car, maybe?” Reigen said, walking to the cracked window pane.
A large red car had pulled up near the front of the house, in a patch of weeds overlooked by trees.
A couple of people got out.
Mob said, “I’ll send more power to the house bubble - they won’t be able to get in.”
One of the people, an older man, was walking towards the house.
Reigen noticed he had something sparkly in his hand. Maybe keys?
“Mob, Ritsu, I think they own this place.”
“Ah shit,” Ritsu said. “They won’t be able to get in now - Mob’s bubble is strong.”
The man was trying to push against an invisible wall, looking more and more confused. The other person, an older woman, had joined him, and was now walking around the wall created by the bubble.
“They’ll probably come back with more people,” Mob said thoughtfully.
“My thoughts exactly,” Reigen said.
Ritsu went to watch the woman as she walked around the house, while Reigen and Mob stayed near the front.
Reigen placed an absent-minded hand on Mob’s shoulder. Mob leaned into the touch.
“It’s time to go, hmm, Mob?”
Mob sighed. “Yeah.”
They silently watched the man punch and kick Mob’s wall. The woman had arrived at the front of the house again - the couple spoke to each other frantically.
Ritsu walked back into the main room.
“The bubble held,” Mob said.
“Of course it did,” Ritsu agreed, sounding very confident in his brother’s powers.
A few minutes later, the couple went back to their car, still talking animatedly.
Reigen waited for them to drive away.
The man came back out with a pickaxe swung over his shoulder. He swung it at the invisible wall, trying various points.
Reigen nudged Mob. “We should pack our stuff.”
They left Ritsu there to make sure the man didn’t break through, and went into the bedroom.
“I’ll pack for Ritsu,” Reigen said, bringing out Ritsu’s bag and opening it up.
“We can steal a car in a bit, dump it away from wherever we live next,” Mob suggested.
Reigen felt like he should try to stop Mob from adding to their pile of crimes.
“That sounds like something Ekubo would have suggested. Can’t we just fly away? I doubt anyone would see us out here.”
“I like when you drive us places,” Mob said.
“What if the police stop us, though?”
“I don’t think they would.” Mob shrugged. “We’re just people traveling.”
“Mob, they’ll have your pictures easily available - Ritsu is a wanted person, and they probably know you’re with him. I’d feel more comfortable if we flew.”
Mob looked at Reigen, clearly trying to decide.
“Please?” Reigen asked, kissing Mob on the lips. “For me? You can make us invisible.”
“Okay,” Mob said, before kissing back, sliding his tongue into Reigen’s mouth.
Footsteps behind them.
Ritsu.
Reigen wondered if he could feel Ritsu’s own powers reaching out, or if he was imagining things.
Ritsu snorted, and gently pushed past them. “The old couple have driven off, dunno when they’ll be back.”
Ritsu took the bag from Reigen and began to fill it himself; Mob, disentangling himself from Reigen, joined him.
Reigen went into the bathroom to get their shampoo and so on, walking out with his hands full of products.
They were soon packed up.
“Let’s go,” Ritsu said, lifting his bag.
Ritsu hadn’t used his powers since the accident. Mob had tried to get him to use them, but Ritsu had sat there, stared at his hands, and shaken his head.
“No, big brother, you should use them. I-” and he had turned away from them both.
So Mob, and later on Reigen, had left him alone.
Mob and Reigen picked up their bags too and headed towards the front door.
They stepped outside, and Mob pulled the power in the protection bubble back into himself with a slight buzzing noise.
Mob then lifted them all into the air. Floating up above the house, they could see the big red car heading towards it.
“We were just in time,” Reigen said, holding tightly onto Mob as they flew.
Reigen carefully avoided looking down as they traveled, floating above the woods. Mob’s veil of invisibility always made him feel weird; his body had disappeared, as had everything they were carrying, but they were all… still there…
Reigen held on tighter to Mob’s little waist.
He hadn’t expected Mob to kiss him, their first night squatting in a ruin, while Ritsu glared and rolled his eyes before leaning over to demand his own kiss from Reigen.
Reigen had given them both what they wanted. He had no choice.
Maybe, if Ritsu’s powers hadn’t exploded when they did, the brothers and he could have had a healthier relationship? Maybe, maybe, maybe.
After half an hour of discomfort, Mob landed them on a clearing in the woods.
“We can camp here for a bit. There’s a village nearby, so Master can get us food.”
They set their packs down, looking around. There wasn’t much to look at while Mob set up the protection bubble. Just some trees, birds, plants.
Reigen breathed in. Breathed out.
Ritsu slid a hand into Reigen’s bigger one. Was Reigen imagining the explosion of power sparking out from Ritsu? Or was it just a spark of static electricity?
“There.” Mob said. “Now no-one can see us or hear us, and we can stay dry. Which is all we need, really.”
“I think we should change our identities, move to another city.” Reigen said later as they huddled around a crackling campfire that Mob had lit. “It would be easier than… doing this every time we’re found.”
The sun twinkled on dew drops falling from tree leaves.
Ritsu grunted. “Maybe.”
“I miss…” Mob started, glancing at Ritsu. “I miss going to the arcades.”
Reigen felt guilty all over again, for what he was and what he was doing.
The brothers were both so young.
Reigen hadn’t remembered that when they were both fucking him raw. Sometimes together, more usually separately.
A vivid memory of both Mob and Ritsu fucking him in the ass at the same time, trying to not hit each other with their limbs, made his dick twitch.
He was such a giant creep. There was a word for men who slept with boys of their age, and-
There were strange voices in the air.
Mob cast his powers over the campfire, making it die out. Smoke twirled upwards, hitting the barrier bubble and curling downwards again.
“They’re here,” a youthful voice said.
A teen appeared at the edge of the clearing. He was followed by what seemed to be a plainclothes policeman, and a few uniformed cops.
The teen was around Mob’s age, and wore sports clothes. He had floppy dark hair.
“Takenaka, there’s no-one here,” the detective said.
“There is! They’re just hidden,” the teen said.
Takenaka tapped at the protective bubble and looked directly at Reigen.
“They’re behind there.”
Ritsu exploded, shattering Mob’s bubble, and Reigen flew backwards, hitting a tree.
A few moments later, Reigen blinked out at a chaotic scene.
Ritsu was standing in the center of the clearing, surrounded by his own dark aura, and further out their bags were scattered around, along with various policemen who had been blown away by the explosion. One of the cops was half-way up a tree.
Takenaka was getting up, covered in mud. “It’s fine! We know you didn’t do it deliberately!”
But Ritsu didn’t seem to be listening.
Mob used his powers to fly towards his brother, trying to surround Ritsu with his own protective bubble.
It wasn’t working.
Reigen got up, unsure of what to do. He hung onto the tree and watched Mob move towards the terror that was Ritsu. Branches were flying around in the small cyclone, as was the stuff they had just packed away.
A half-full body wash bottle almost hit Reigen in the head.
Mob exploded too, sending out his own aura of power to calm down Ritsu.
Reigen froze, staring at the brothers as they battled with each other, Ritsu clearly trying to go elsewhere and Mob trying to keep him here.
Two cyclones spinning at each other, fighting for dominance.
Reigen wondered if the woods would survive. The clearing had been destroyed; half the trees around it were torn up too.
Hell, would the brothers survive? Would the city? He had an image of them fighting each other in these forms across Seasoning itself.
But what could Reigen do?
Ritsu needed to be stopped before he accidentally killed more people.
Ritsu seemed to be moving in Reigen’s direction. Reigen wondered if Ritsu was still aware enough to know who he, Reigen, was.
What was it like in the brothers’ minds right then?
Reigen clung more firmly onto the large tree.
Just as Ritsu reached the edge of the clearing, Mob managed to break through to him. Ritsu’s dark aura fizzed out, leaving a teen boy gasping as he floated in his brother’s arms.
Mob, though… he was still buzzing away, his dark aura exploding upwards at the sky and expanding outwards to cover his little brother.
Reigen glanced across the clearing. The policemen were mostly gawking; one was still trying to climb down from the tree he’d been thrown into.
No help from that corner, then. Reigen would have to do this himself.
Reigen leaped into the ruined clearing, towards Mob.
Reigen struggled against Mob’s force, falling on the ground and holding onto the mud the brothers had churned up with his hands as he forced his body forward.
He crawled forward, body to the ground, using his nails to dig into the mud.
Mob was a few feet away, Reigen had almost made it.
Reigen launched himself onto Mob’s feet, grimly clinging onto his ankles as Mob’s powers attempted to shake him off.
“Mob! It’s me!”
Had Mob heard a word he’d said? Reigen thought that maybe it was quieter where he was, but that could just have been because Reigen was at the eye of the storm.
The ethereal being that was Mob seemed to be considering this new pressure on his ankle.
“Mob? It’s me, your master.”
A little tendril of power stroked at Reigen’s hair.
So Mob was at least aware of who Reigen was. That was good.
Reigen found himself being lifted up from the ground and floated into Mob’s free arm.
Reigen glanced at the unconscious Ritsu next to him. No help from there either.
Reigen placed a hand near Mob’s face, cupping his cheek. “Please stop, you’re going to hurt people!”
Both Reigen and Ritsu were pushed inwards, towards Mob’s torso.
“Stop it, Mob.”
Mob bent his head down towards Ritsu and Reigen, curling his power even tighter around both people.
If he wasn’t responding to “Mob”, then maybe…
“Shigeo.”
The dark aura froze.
Reigen curved his arms around Mob’s slender torso, hugging him back.
“Shigeo, stop it.”
Mob calmed down, his cosmic powers withdrawing into his body, as he slowly sank onto the ground.
After that, it was a mess of terrified looking policemen and Takenaka reaching out to reassure Mob that it was okay.
“I’m a telepath - I know he didn’t mean it. The police will listen to me.”
Really? thought Reigen, feeling a little skeptical. People lie all the time.
I know he’s innocent, a voice said in Reigen’s mind. See, I wasn’t lying.
Reigen found himself remembering having sex with Mob and Ritsu.
Takenaka stared directly at Reigen, turning paler. But he said nothing.
Reigen looked at some trash, wishing the ground would swallow him whole.
…The only reason I’m not telling the police about that is because you calmed Mob down. Takenaka sent a viciously clear memory of people screaming in the Salt Middle School disaster.
Reigen shivered.
I don’t want that to ever happen again, Takenaka finished, glaring at Reigen.
Reigen could only nod.
The police, following the detective’s lead and frantically assuring the brothers and Reigen that they weren't being arrested, soon had them, and the remnants of their bags, in the back of an unmarked car as they headed to Seasoning.
Mob and Ritsu pressed their noses to the car window, clearly enjoying the ride.
“Big brother, I wonder if our parents will be there?”
Reigen dozed off before Mob could reply. He woke up when they arrived at the Kageyama siblings’ house; the detective said something about wanting to question them there, with their parents present.
Reigen guessed that he wanted the brothers to feel more calm than they would if they were all in the prefecture’s police station.
The Kageyamas were crying their eyes out when they saw their children. They were alternating between hugging them in joy and telling them both to never worry their parents so much again.
The couple were less pleased to see Reigen. The teary-eyed glares from Mr Kageyama were particularly vicious. Reigen decided to stay relatively quiet for once and let the man think what he would; whatever he was imagining was probably true anyway.
Several hours later, the police left, and Mr Kageyama turned to Reigen.
“Come outside, we are having words.”
“Your place or mine?” Reigen replied tiredly before following the older man.
Six months later
Reigen had reopened Spirits and Such in a different location. He rarely saw the Kageyama brothers openly these days; after matters had chugged through police bureaucracy and Reigen had been left alone, their parents had done their best to stop Reigen and the brothers from interacting. After all, Reigen had encouraged them in their foolhardy scheme to run away from the law!
Reigen’s reputation was… somewhat tattered, but it was nothing he couldn’t deal with.
He had considered moving to another city, starting afresh, but sometimes one or both of the brothers would sneak away to visit him.
The sex was amazing. Ritsu left bite marks all over his body, which Mob would see and cover with kisses and licks.
Salt Middle School had been rebuilt, with Mob and Ritsu’s help. The building looked as good as new. The minds of the students and teachers who had lived through the disaster were a different matter.
The headteacher had called Reigen in to exorcise a spirit that hung around what had been the school council room.
“A sensitive matter, we can’t have this getting back to the parents. You understand.”
Reigen nodded and accepted the giant fee. He had promised that the brothers would get a bonus for helping him.
Reigen watched Mob exorcise the restless spirits who had been attracted to a site of such pain, and glanced at Ritsu watching his big brother in turn. He sighed fondly.
Maybe they would all be okay.