Chapter Text
BZZZ. BZZ. BZZ. BZZ. BZZ. BZZ.
There was that sound, again. The one Reigen Arataka unfortunately has to wake up to, every single morning at 6:00AM.
To be honest, he never thought of himself to be an: “early bird” type of person. He just had become used to his routine for the past couple years. It didn’t stop him from rolling over for 5 more minutes sometimes or occasionally losing track of time and running late…though he kicked himself in the ass for it, of course.
Today was one of those mornings where Reigen decided to lay in bed and soak in the warm comforter and soft mattress a little longer.
Lately he had been working himself to the bone to scrap up some extra money that he didn’t necessarily *need* to get by for rent, groceries or clothes, but it just was nice to have.
Reigen feels a weight on top of his chest. It was light, but heavy enough for him get the itching need to open his eyes just because he’s out of breath.
It feels like he was either experiencing the fact he might be stuck in between a dream and being awake (much like the feeling of falling occasionally and being startled into waking up which he had grown to know well)
Groggily, the messy haired man slowly opens his eyes to see a small, tan boy with unruly messy hair just like the older man. It was just slightly wavy, letting the longer and uneven strands curl upwards. The hair itself was black and rested slightly above the center of the middle of the kid’s neck.
His bangs draped, a little too long. He was in desperate need of a haircut. It covers his eyebrows and almost entirely made his forehead disappear.
Any longer and the hair would be poking his eye.
Singular.
The kid was missing his entire right eye.
A long, dark but thin scar stretched across that side of his face, directly over the lazy eye socket.
The boy wears a green t-shirt that was one too many sizes big for him. The design is faded and no longer legible. The length of it covered his body as if it were a dress, though it was obvious he was wearing (too big) dark blue gym shorts underneath as it barely poked out from the dress-shirt.
The boy opens his mouth to speak, showing a gap where his right tooth was missing. “Daaad it’s past the alarm tiiiime.” He says while still sitting on top of the man. The kid even shook Reigen’s arm, too.
“Five more minutes, kid. Come on. Let a guy get some sleep. Not everyone likes waking up at the crack of dawn.” The man says, rolling over and knocking off the boy who just responded with a giggle.
Reigen closes his eyes again and couldn’t help but smile just a little. He had been alone for almost his entire life, up until he luckily stumbled into this kid who was in need of help about a year and a half ago.
They were massively different, the two of them. And it was expensive to be taking care of a whole other human being, nonethe less *raise* one, but sometimes moments like this made it worth it.
It was weird getting used to it, and sometimes it still is.
Arataka had never ever planned on being a dad or anything along the lines of it, but he really had no choice. He knew how awful adoption homes could be, as well as social services as a whole.
It just wasn’t worth it. The man was stubborn and struggled with emotional vulnerability but he was not heartless (contrary to popular belief).
Light padding of much-too-big socks walking out of the room was heard, letting Reigen knock himself out a little longer. He used to take rest for granted, but now he tries to savor every bit of it.
A small hand grabs Reigen’s arm sometime later, shaking it around again but with a little more force this time. “Dad wake up. Daaad. Dad. We’re gonna be late…” He whispers…but not really whispers, given it’s just a quieter tone of talking.
Arataka’s eyes groggily open once more, his eyelids begging for him to drop them again and just go back to sleep.
He slowly adjusts to the brightness of the room, grumbling a bit. His vision is too bleary to see without his contacts in, and Shigeo had just started to learn clock hands and numbers. Reigen decides to ask him.
“Mob, what time is it?” He’s sitting up slowly, now. Yawning and picking the crust from his eyes out.
“It’s...eight, I think.” The boy responds after a moment.
Reigen sits there, dissecting the numbers in his own head before his eyes shoot open and he nearly falls out of his own bed tripping on the covers.
Reigen had slept in for another two whole hours.
What was the kid even doing for two hours?! He did have a habit of wanting be more independent the past couple of weeks but in the end always relied on Reigen anyhow.
“Shit, shit, shit…” The man mutters to himself in one of the quietest voices he could do to make sure that Shigeo didn’t try to parrot the words coming from his mouth.
“Hey, Mob, why don’t you get your shoes on, bud, okay?” Arataka says as he messily digs around in his stand-up closet.
Luckily he was just going to work, which required the same outfit every day. No worrying about having to fit into every single piece of clothing to see what felt the best like he did practically all of his life before having a day-to-day job.
“Okay!” The boy says, nodding at the same time. He walks off into the genkan.
Luckily at this age, Shigeo knew how to do a lot more things himself, so it was easier to deal with slip-ups on Reigen’s end. Unfortunately for someone with ADHD, time management is not on your side.
Mob had gotten himself completely dressed in his brand new school uniform, a white t-shirt with navy blue tartan pants. During primary school that’s the bare requirement, allowing the kids to wear shoes and top layer of their choice.
Which was great for Reigen, so he could save more money and also for Shigeo who had a huge attachment to this slightly-little-too-big green hoodie with a little brown and white puppy on it. A bone in its mouth and a blue collar around its neck completed with a shiny gold tag.
He also adored these little sneakers that lit up every time they hit the floor. They were almost black, with light blue midsole (the inside of the shoe being this color as well) and the outsole was a light green.
It reminded him of green apples.
The tip at the front had a strip of white and there was no specific logo from a company on them, just the same electric green on the very right and left side in a small little zig zag. The laces were white, crisp and untouched.
Mob’s learning how to tie his shoes.
“Oi! Mob! Eyepatch.” Reigen calls out as he throws on his suit pants and drags his binder on, buttoning his white collared shirt over it.
He completes the set with a matching gray blazer and his signature pink tie that Mob so graciously picked out for him during a trip to the clothing store but Reigen had actually grown to love.
“Oh! Yeah!” The boy shouts across the space.
There’s a sound of heavy and light running across the wooden floor as Shigeo enters the small bathroom where Reigen was quickly trying to press down his bed-head and brush his teeth as fast as humanly possible.
The heavy and light running was coming from the sound of one sneaker on, and the other foot left with just the sock. The laces dragged on the floor. He hasn’t even gotten a chance to tie them yet.
Reigen pauses and sighs before grabbing the black patch on the tile counter, bending down and crouching to the boy’s height.
Arataka holds back the bangs on the boy’s head as he gently places the patch over the right side of Mob’s face. Reigen adjusts it for a moment, Shigeo trying his best to keep still but tapping his foot up and down, the excitement of the day is right out of his reach and he’s eager to kick it off.
The man drops Shigeo’s bangs over the patch and before standing up, he quickly and efficiently tied the loose laces on the right shoe.
Reigen swears he feels his knees crack as he stands up and lightly pushed Shigeo’s back towards the doorframe.
“Now go put on your other shoe. You’re lucky those are brand new, otherwise there’d be dirt around the apartment.” As Reigen speaks, he continues to brush his teeth, letting half the words he was saying be muffled by the minty toothpaste bubbling in his mouth.
“WHAT?” Shigeo shouts from the genkan. He had left in the middle of Reigen’s spiel.
Arataka snorts in response, realizing he had been talking to absolutely nobody but himself. He then spit out the toothpaste residue into the sink and washed it down with the faucet while running his toothbrush underneath it.
The handle clanks as he drops the brush into a little holder.
Reigen quickly puts on a pair of gray crew socks while still standing (he almost tripped and ate shit while doing so) then quickly hurries across the apartment to tug on his black (borderline gray due to the faded color) dress shoes while sitting on the genkan’s wood step.
Standing up straight, the man smooths out his pants and the front of his blazer, looking down at the small boy next to him who was bouncing on his heels, staring at the door as if he was a dog about to go on a walk.
He was humming some sort of song that Reigen never heard, maybe Shigeo had made it up.
“Alright, let’s get outta here.” Arataka says while Shigeo is the first one to grab the knob and throw the door open at the same time the man grabs his keys from the hook to the right.
Reigen furrows his eyebrows, getting the itching feeling that something was missing.
“Mob. Checklist.” He says while holding the door open, letting the cool air from the outside of the apartment complex hit them both.
“Shoes, pants, shirt, hoodie….uuuhhhhm….” Shigeo trails off, losing his train of thought while the idea of an exciting day was ahead of him.
“School things.”
“I got my lunch from the fridgeee…stuff in my pack…” The boy says mindlessly, holding his fingers out each time he was counting a different item.
Bingo. That’s what it was. The randoseru.
Reigen quickly looks back to see it diligently sitting on the kitchen counter, a dark shade of blue and obviously used before.
Nonetheless it was taken care of pretty well.
It wasn’t beaten up, and if there were any small holes present Reigen had sewed them up already.
In fact, it’s what he was up so late in the night for last night.
His fingers kept shocking him occasionally for the bits of pain Arataka had gotten from poking the needle onto his skin a couple times by accident.
The man huffs, letting the door go and hesitantly tracking his shoes across the apartment to swipe up the bag, opening the flap to quickly double check that Shigeo was actually set.
He was.
Reigen runs back to the other side of the apartment, down the genkan and then locking the door. He tugs at the handle to make sure it’s locked (it is) and then with one arm holds the genkan in front of Shigeo, who eagerly grabs it and pulls it over his back.
“Can’t get far without that, ya know.” Arataka says before stuffing his keys in his pocket and letting out a breath of air. His skin pokes at him again, but this time from the chilliness of the morning-time air.
Stupidly enough, and this happens often, he forgot a coat or scarf or just anything to keep himself warm. And there was absolutely no time to get it, so he decides that he would just wait it out.
“Let’s go.” Reigen starts to take off, Mob following right behind him. The kid takes his hand as they head down the stairs, Reigen holding it with a soft but firm grip.
Stairs were something Shigeo had sort of a issue with sometimes. It was still hard to fully grasp the idea of where the step is and isn’t, given the lack of depth perception.
He had gotten better at a lot of things over the past year and a half. He had no choice but to do that. It was frustrating and hard and half the time it reduced Mob to tears.
Now, things were still a little upsetting to him but at least Shigeo had Reigen and experience. It was only a couple things that he still struggled with, anyways.
Stairs, crowds, learning to adjust to certain distances and the like.
Mob’s grip tightens a bit with each step and Reigen doesn’t make any move of letting go. “You’re alright.” Reigen says quietly.
“I’m okay.” Shigeo repeats back, stepping along with him.
The second they make it to the bottom of the stairs, Arataka scoops up the boy who now weighs a couple extra pounds than before due to the things in the genkan that he so carefully packed together the night before.
A muffled ‘oof’ escapes his mouth involuntarily and Mob looks a little confused and slightly frustrated, but he wasn’t going to pass down a opportunity for a free pick-me-up. Reigen takes off in a jog and eventually speeds it up a bit to a run.
If Reigen was doing the math correctly, and he was pretty sure he was, the train would stop in 5 minutes, leaving the two just barely enough time to hop on to make it to their destinations before Shigeo was late for school and Reigen was late to open the office.
Obviously the latter was less important. He was lucky that the boy’s stop came before his own.
Arataka’s thighs burn and his arms are starting to do the same, that prickling feeling growing stronger from the needle-poking.
Thankfully with all the exercise he was getting in right now, he’s no longer cold and regretting the decision of not bringing any sort of winter gear.
‘Just a couple more minutes, we’re almost there.’ Reigen tells his brain, who seemed to reluctantly agree and hold back on immediately dropping his entire body to the floor.
As if it were some sort of miracle, the second Reigen lands his shoe on the train station asphalt, it pulls up to meet him.
Just the luck and charm of Reigen Arataka. Things happening when he somehow needs it the most.
The man shoves through the couple of other people waiting on the platform, being one of the first ones to sit on the seats of the vehicle. Reigen lets the boy sit on his lap for a moment, leaning his own head back and closing his eyes, catching his breath.
Shigeo looked up at him, slight confusion in his eye before slowly slipping off the gray suit pants and toddling to the seat next to Reigen, pulling himself up and sitting beside the man. Shigeo taps Reigen’s arm with his index finger softly, eyes fixated on the genkan that Reigen has unintentionally wrapped his arms around while Mob switched spots.
“…Oh…sorry.” Reigen huffs as his chest rose and fell quickly, heart still burning from his lack of exercise.
Arataka pushes over the genkan to his left where Mob sat and the boy eagerly takes it into his own lap where it doesn’t leave any space left. The boy started to swing his feet around, looking back and forth to the surroundings.
Metal bars, big windows, cushy red seats him and Reigen sit on, as well as everyone else who were piling in to get to their own destinations.
Shigeo had definitely been on a train before, but never to school. He was treating it like a whole brand new experience.
The doors came to a slightly abrupt shut which made Shigeo flinch for a moment but as the whistle rang out as a warning for everyone inside and outside of it, the wheels started to turn slowly and fast, then faster.
As it whistles the second time, Shigeo couldn’t help but grin while swinging his legs again.
Reigen sits up straighter and pulls his head up, looking down at Mob. The man snorts quietly in amusement and runs his lanky hand through his own hair.
Arataka would be lying if he said that he wasn’t worried about Mob, even if it was only a little bit.
The process that it had taken to get Shigeo legally adopted and into a public school had practically taken a year, a little over it. It had been exhausting.
The school was aware of the situation, and Shigeo had even taken a exam for his grade to see where he was at and it was honestly a miracle to hear that he could just continue from the grade he should be in, instead of having to hold him back for the year he missed.
All Reigen wanted for this kid was for him to have as much as a normal life as he could, despite his disability and the circumstances that came with it.
He wanted him to have a supportive block— a parent that he could lean on and talk to when need be.
A lunch that was made and packed for every day so that Mob would never go starving.
Someone who wouldn’t treat him differently just because he looked or acted or had things that made him just a little different from other kids.
All of these things were something Reigen never got, and he was going to make damned sure this kid was going to have it all.
Granted, Arataka didn’t have ESPer powers, obviously. Him and the entire world knew that. That little detail made him and Shigeo a bit different. But not much. Not really, anyways.
The way Reigen saw it, it was no different than anyone else with other special abilities that didn’t even require powers.
“Rules.” Reigen finally says after a good minute. “What’re the rules?”
Mob huffs, as if he’s gone over this thousands of times over and over. “I know the rules…..”
“Okay. Say them for me. I forgot.”
Mob’s frown that was starting to settle on his face disappears as he giggles a little bit. “No you didn’t! You always say that.”
“Well, maybe this time I really did! How would you know?” Reigen smiles a little back, gently elbowing the boy.
He giggles again. “Did you really forget?”
“I did…” Arataka sighs dramatically. “How will I ever know what to do now?”
“But you don’t have powers.” Shigeo pokes the gray suited arm. “Only me!”
“I still wanna know the rules, so I can remember them this time.”
“You’ll forgettt.”
“Not this time.”
Shigeo smiles and holds up one finger, his index. He shows it to Reigen. “One…don’t use them against orrr around other people.”
“What’s them?”
“My powers!”
Reigen nods in agreement. “Yep! That’s rule one, I remember it now. Okay, how about two?”
“Uhm…” Mob pauses to think. “Be nice to each other?”
Another nod. “You shouldn’t start any arguments or fights, even if you know or feel like you’re right. Okay? The truth behind one’s charm is kindness, so that’s what we have to do is be a good person. That’s all.”
Shigeo huffs once more, not as big of a fan of the second rule. Sometimes he found himself feeling things rather too strongly, which made it hard to not want to speak up about it.
He had been taught and told by Reigen that he could always bring that sorta thing up to his parent as a safe space, but in public situations to moderate that sort of expression.
“Last one.” Arataka nudges the kid softly. It snapped Mob out of his own train of thought railing off the track.
“Take 3 deep breaths when I feel my big feelings instead of letting it explode.” This answer was confident, maybe the most sure of them all. It was something Shigeo had to do more often than not.
“Alright! Good work, kiddo. You’ll be okay as long as you do those three things today.”
Arataka was saying this out loud to the boy, but it was honestly more of a reassurance to himself.
He really was nervous about the day ahead of him.
There were so many words and affirmations and things that Reigen wanted to vomit out of his mouth just to make sure Shigeo really knew how much he meant to him, but… when he opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out.
He tries again, Mob’s feet still swinging up and down, hovering just above the floor.
This time when Reigen tries, the whistle blows and the train halts to a stop.
The man swore his heart would burn a hole through his chest as Mob looked up to him with a gleaming eye.
Arataka swallows the lump in his throat and throws back a customer service smile to the kid, giving him the signal to slip off the cushy seat and head towards the doors as a couple other people made their ways to the exit as well.
“Bye, Dad!”
“You walk straight over to the office when you’re done! You hear me, Mob?!” Reigen shouts above the crowd, ignoring the faces with confused and annoyed looks.
“I WILL!”
Arataka can see a small little hand in the air, a half wave before it disappears into the sea of people.
Before the doors shut, Reigen tries to take a look at the pavement outside the train, half expecting to see the little boy standing there, still.
He’s not.
The doors close and Reigen’s heartbeat starts to stead out.
He doesn’t have time to be worried sick so much that it makes him nauseous when there’s a business he needs to run within the next 15 minutes.