Work Text:
Reigen doesn’t have much.
He has his office, sure. Four walls. A desk. Paid for with a surplus of ill-advised bank loans, and despite its sparse decorations and the water damage on the ceiling, the business is his, and that’s more than enough for him to get by on most days.
Except now the office isn’t so empty, and the walls aren’t so barren. There’s a drawing on his desk that wasn’t there before, and a chair that’s left pushed out from the table perpendicular to his. Signs of life that another person has been here, making the office feel more lived-in than Reigen thinks it ever has.
He picks up the drawing and stares at it. Two flowers, side by side, orange petals reaching out towards a crudely drawn sky.
Hiring Mob is a slip on Reigen’s part that he knows never should have happened. But this boy that he’s come to understand is an anomaly all on his own, a rare beauty in an otherwise stagnant world. His naivety and good-naturedness are infectious until they seep into the very foundations of Reigen’s simple life, and suddenly, without warning, he finds himself looking at the world from a far different perspective than before.
Reigen is not a decent man; he isn’t even a good boss. He doesn’t have much, but he has Mob, and that’s more than enough for him to get by on any given day.
He sets the drawing down with more care than he means to, smoothing the curl of the paper’s edge like it’s something delicate and fragile. His chair protests the shift in weight as he settles back down. For a moment, there’s only the distant hum of traffic outside and the flickering of an overhead light.
He can still hear Mob’s voice from earlier, soft and matter-of-fact. I saw these flowers on my way here, he’d told him. I thought you might like seeing them. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Mob had simply believed he’d enjoy it.
Reigen’s always been good at keeping things compartmentalized, boxed and labelled and buried under several layers of sarcastic indifference. But Mob doesn’t let things stay buried. Not really. He doesn’t push or dig—he exists, quietly and persistently, until things start to unearth themselves.
And that’s the issue with him, Reigen thinks. Sometimes he feels the need to tell the kid to watch out, that the world isn’t as welcoming as he may think it is, especially when it comes to people like Reigen, who never seem to have any good intentions at heart.
He should really tell him the truth.
Dragging a hand over his face, Reigen presses his thumb and index finger to the corners of his mouth and stares at the ceiling overhead. The water stain above his desk has grown—he’ll need to call someone about that. Not today, though. Today, if he moves too fast, Reigen thinks the silence of the office might crack open into something he’s unable to look at just yet.
He looks back down at the drawing.
It’s not even a good one, technically speaking. The sky is coloured haphazardly, as if an afterthought, and the petals are uneven, like Mob was uncertain of what size they should be. He can see where the marker has seeped through the page and onto the other side—places where Mob must have hesitated, unsure how to continue, felt tip bearing down hard.
But it’s the kind of picture someone makes with care. And it’s been left here, deliberately, for him.
Reigen presses his palms against his eyes.
Easing out a long breath, Reigen rises from his creaking chair and reaches for a thumbtack located in the plastic dish on his desk. He pins it to the wall nearest the entrance—right next to the gaudy poster of himself posing (what was he thinking?)—and stands back to take in the sight.
It’s stupid. He’s being stupid. There’s no room in this line of business for him to be sentimental, especially towards someone like Mob.
But when he steps back, the office doesn’t feel so dim and lifeless.
The door swings open with its usual chime, and Reigen doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is.
Mob steps in, hair slightly wind-tousled, the top button of his school uniform left undone. He stops in the middle of the doorway, looking between Reigen and the drawing, like he’s unsure if he’s interrupting something, fingers tightening at his bag’s straps.
“Um,” Mob says, “I forgot my lunchbox.”
Reigen moseys towards his chair. He gestures towards the small, rectangular table next to his desk, where a metal box sits. “You leave that thing here again, and I might have to start charging it rent.”
Mob doesn’t laugh—he never usually does at Reigen’s jokes—but the corner of his mouth twitches, showing that he appreciates Reigen’s humour nonetheless.
He crosses the room and picks up the lunchbox. Reigen watches him, trying desperately not to make it look like he’s memorizing this, memorizing Mob. But he is. He doesn’t want to forget.
Mob hesitates.
“I saw a really pretty bird on the way here,” he tells Reigen. “It was blue.”
Reigen lifts an eyebrow. “You gonna draw me another masterpiece?”
Mob doesn’t take the bait. Reigen doesn’t even know if he registers the joke. Instead, he nods, all serious and no-nonsense. “If you’d like.”
Reigen waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, alright. Fill the whole office with them, if you really want. We’ll start charging our clients admission for the art gallery.”
Mob smiles—just a little one, but it’s genuine.
And when he excuses himself and the door swings closed behind him, Reigen turns back to the pinned flowers.
Reigen doesn’t have much.
He has his office. Four walls. A desk.
Except now bright orange flowers are blooming into his life, and he thinks there may be enough space left in his heart for a boy with marker-stained fingers and a habit of losing lunchboxes.