Chapter Text
If there’s one thing to be said about the Salt Middle School cultural festival, it’s that the takoyaki is cheap.
Takenaka bobs and weaves through the bustling school hallways. He’s never liked crowds, for obvious reasons, but people will think he’s weird and antisocial if he doesn’t show up to at least his own class’s event. Whatever that was. He managed to get assigned to stapling flyers and didn’t read a single one of them.
Another class in his year put together a haunted house. Takenaka cringes at the mere idea—he can imagine how humiliating it must be to walk through something like that, pretending to be scared of his peers embarrassing themselves in sheets. Some little kids might enjoy it. Some parents might patronizingly say Good job! while internally bemoaning their children’s futures. Hard pass.
Probably down this hallway. That sign says class 1-2, so the next room must be—
(Takenaka’s ‘earplugs’ are a metaphor. The effect is more like a wall around his brain if it’s like anything at all, which it isn’t, so earplugs works just as well.
‘Hearing’ is a metaphor, too.
Most people don’t think solely in words, let alone complete sentences. Before he shut them out, the inner worlds pressing in on him from every direction were a constant sensory jumble—ideas, sounds, sensations, images, half-complete memories—impressions like the truth in a dream, never seen but known with absolute clarity. He just gets it, as easily as if the thoughts were his own, although the same impossible intuition tells him when they aren't.
All of that is to say, when someone shatters his mental barrier like glass, he gets the full picture.)
A swooping in the stomach. A burning in the cheeks. A drop of sweat at the hairline, fear and bashfulness compounding into a sensation that zips from clavicle to belly like a Y-incision.
The vision projected directly onto Takenaka’s retinas flares so bright it briefly blinds him. And that vision—is a random first-year boy in a maid dress.
A boy who looks moderately homicidal, a combination with the cutesy outfit that only increases the frequency of the heart-shaped bubbles popping around his face. He’s carrying a drink tray and looking at the source of the burning gunpowder thoughts with exasperated recognition. His eyes are huge and dark and sparkle like a long-exposure photograph of the Milky Way.
Takenaka gropes frantically in his own mind for some kind of off switch. He’s never needed to find one before; he thought he’d cut power to the whole damn house. When his barrier finally slams back into place like a storm door, he leans heavily against the wall of the crowded hallway, sweating and trying not to tremble.
“What the fuck?” he whispers.
(He finds out later, mostly by happenstance, that the boy in the maid dress was Kageyama Ritsu. Later than that, he finds out Kageyama Ritsu is psychic, and has an even more psychic older brother, and then some other things happen involving aliens and the power of friendship.
And that’s all fine.
But what it doesn’t explain, and what keeps Takenaka looking over his shoulder for the better part of a year, is the mysterious fact that someone in this school has a crush on the younger Kageyama brother so powerful that it ripped through Takenaka’s ironclad defenses like wet tissue paper. The paranoia fades into background static, but lingers.)
Takenaka doesn’t make a habit of visiting Kurata at work.
The place is shady, no matter how much good she insists they do for Seasoning City’s ostensibly-numerous victims of hauntings and spiritual maladies. Takenaka has been psychic his entire life, and he’s never even seen a spirit.
(What he has seen: Reigen lying through his teeth on the phone with a car rental company at three o’clock in the morning, claiming a gust of wind blew down a termite-weakened tree at the perfect angle to crash into the car and leave damage indistinguishable from the car crashing into it, which was of course not at all his fault and no reason to charge an extra fee, and the psychological toll of the accident contributed to his tardiness so if you think about it the late fees ought to be excused as well.
But Takenaka has also met Kageyama Shigeo, whose unwavering faith in the impossible—finding telepaths, meeting aliens, talking Kurata down from a sour mood—has never once been misplaced. So if he believes Reigen is a good guy who does right by his clients and employees, which Kurata insists he does, maybe that’s just another true thing Takenaka hasn’t seen proof of yet. It was enough to bring him to the guy’s birthday party, anyway. Though, like everyone else, he did laugh at the cake incident. He's only human.)
A week from now, Kageyama, Kurata, her former club subordinates, and Takenaka himself plan to get into a car driven by Reigen Arataka of their own free will for a second time. Never let it be said that Takenaka Momozou is incapable of trust.
“What time are we meeting on Tuesday?” Takenaka asks, leaning against the wall by the comically small desk where Kurata supposedly does a job she may or may not get paid for. He watches the screen of her DS, mildly entranced by the rhythm of the little bubbles of energy shooting across an 8-bit platform. They keep matching up with the beat of the song playing on a low volume through his headphones.
“Depends. I’ll ask Reigen-san how early he’s supposed to pick up the car.” Kurata sticks out her tongue in consternation and thumbs the buttons so hard Takenaka wonders if she’ll crack the casing. He pulls one earbud out, letting it dangle by his shoulder.
“Isn’t knowing his schedule your job?” he mocks.
“My job isn’t keeping track of Reigen-san’s every move all day long,” she sniffs haughtily. “I have other things to worry about.”
“Right. Lots of important work being done here.” Takenaka’s pointed glance around the deserted office and back at the current target of Kurata’s attention is wasted on her.
“Oh,” she adds, “and we have to schedule extra time to bust Inukawa and Mob-kun out of cram school. They already agreed to ditch, but Mob-kun is responsible and also highly suggestible and Inukawa is a coward, so I’m worried—Shou! Don’t do that!”
She looks up furiously from the GAME OVER screen and glares into the corner of the room. Takenaka almost jumps out of his skin when he notices a kid around their age slouched across the sofa. He could have sworn on his life that he and Kurata were alone in the office.
“Never lose focus!” So-called Shou’s triumphant smile would be better suited to holding a knife in his hand than a gaming console. His blue eyes snap to Takenaka, who imagines the startling irises of a husky and the twitching of a lip over canine teeth. The voice that comes out in place of a bite is startlingly casual. “Hey. You’re one of Tome’s alien boys?”
“No. She annoyed me so much I quit to play tennis.” Takenaka falls back on teasing Kurata to regain his balance.
Something flickers across Shou’s face, a shadow in shallow water that quickly sinks back into seemingly-empty darkness. He snaps his own DS closed and sits up, posture still painfully careless.
“But you’re still taking up a seat in the car? Did you lose a bet?”
Kurata scoffs. “Takenaka-kun pretends he’s too cool to care about anything. Unfortunately for him, I know his secret weakness.”
“Yeah?” Shou prompts. Takenaka scowls.
“Yep. He actually—” Kurata gasps, pointing an accusatory finger like the star of an especially bad courtroom drama, “gives a fuck!”
“No one will ever believe you,” Takenaka taunts with a shove to her shoulder. She sticks a leg out and kicks him hard in the shin.
“You guys are funny.” Shou picks his DS back up, the picture of disinterest. “Say hi to the aliens for me.”
Takenaka knows kids like this—not personally, given how few people he allows to know him personally, but he’s had years of hearing the wary thoughts of classmates who act out. A guy like Shou is rude and offputting so nobody tries to get close, like a harmless, frightened lizard with the coloring of its venomous cousin.
(That’s what Takenaka figures, anyway, since Shou is hanging out with Kurata, and Kurata collects sad losers like gachapon prizes. Takenaka may have developed a fondness for sad losers over the last year, but facts are facts.)
And yet. There’s a weight behind Shou’s last comment, a little flash of red scales.
“The aliens might not even be there this year,” Takenaka says. “Why? Are you obsessed with them too? Let me guess, you met President Kurata on some creepy forum.”
“Sure, something like that.” Shou smiles again, and Takenaka wonders if the coloring is mimicry after all.
“Cut it out,” Kurata commands the room at large. “Don’t make me throttle both of you.”
Takenaka opens his mouth to reply, but chokes on his own tongue when his ears are pierced by screaming tinnitus.
A hand around my throat, firm as wood. My neck hurts. I can’t breathe. My face is still bleeding. It’s probably getting on his hand. If it stains his shirt cuff, that’s another thing I get to pay for. My fault. I was careless. This is all my fault. Dad, please, stop—
Takenaka flinches.
“Cut what out?” Shou asks, impishly innocent.
Nothing on Shou’s face betrays the violence of that sudden thought—that memory—but there’s no question in Takenaka’s mind. He knows who it belonged to before it burst through the door in his skull that he thought was locked up tight.
This is the second time in as many years that something has bypassed his earplugs. Takenaka has heard awful, awful things many times before and gone on with his life, but it’s been long enough since that was his daily normal that it leaves him shaky and vaguely nauseous.
“You’re being weird!” Kurata barks.
Takenaka flinches before he realizes what she’s referring to: the not-quite-passive aggressive nips he and Shou were taking at each other. Nothing to do with the other way Takenaka is being weird at the moment. Because he isn’t. He’s only ever normal all the time.
“I was just making conversation!” Shou defends. He waves his DS, clearing Kurata’s accusation like so much smoke, still showing the edges of his teeth.
Morbidly curious, Takenaka eyes Shou’s throat.
No hand-shaped bruise. No open wounds on his face. Maybe he’s in a better situation now. Maybe he isn’t. It’s none of Takenaka’s business, and Shou doesn’t strike him as somebody who’d welcome him making it his business.
Takenaka respects that. And, more urgently—
“I have to leave,” he mumbles, stuffing the dangling earbud back in his ear.
“Huh?” Kurata calls after him. Takenaka makes it past the bathroom in three long strides. He makes it to the exit before Kurata can say much more than, “What about Tuesday?”
“Text me when you figure it out,” he snaps over his shoulder through the gap of the closing door.
“They didn’t even invite you. Doesn’t that piss you off?”
“No,” Ritsu replies easily. His eyes dart from his assigned reading to the open notebook on his desk as he jots down another note. “Should it?”
“It pisses me off.” Shou watches the smooth strokes of Ritsu’s pen. Black ink cascades across the page between the ruled lines of the notebook, as beautifully ordered as sheet music. Shou can almost hear the tune.
“Why?”
Shou tosses his own book aside and rolls off of Ritsu’s bed, landing in a half-crouch next to his chair. He props his elbows on the desk and looks up at him. Ritsu looks back, eyebrows jumping at the sudden proximity but otherwise unfazed.
“Because I’ve heard the alien story in bits and pieces from three different people,” Shou says. “You, your brother, and Tome. And in every single version,” he pokes Ritsu in the arm, “you made it happen. They needed a telepath, and you got them a telepath!”
“Technically, I got them two.”
“See?” Shou tosses his hand in the air. “And that’s not worth a seat in Reigen’s shitty rental?”
Ritsu rubs the top of Shou’s head with his elbow. He might be trying to shove him off of his desk, but he’s not trying very hard, so Shou will take the gesture as a fond reassurance that Ritsu is comfortable having Shou in his space and politely drop backwards into a seat on the floor.
“I didn’t want to go.” Ritsu spins his desk chair around, homework temporarily abandoned. “My brother’s friends are… fine—”
Shou barks a laugh. Ritsu glares at him.
“My brother’s friends are nice,” he corrects, emphatic and defensive, to an audience that knows him way too well. “But I’m not close with any of them. It would be awkward to hang around stuck in a car all day. And I don’t trust Reigen-san’s driving.”
“I’m gonna ask him to teach me to drive,” Shou says idly, leaning back on one hand. “Reigen, I mean.”
Ritsu drops his pen. “Why would you do that?” He ducks down to pick it up off the floor and returns with a baffled sneer on his face. “Nii-san and Kurata-senpai mentioned that he hit a tree last year, right?”
“That’s exactly why.” Shou grins with his teeth. “Ritsu, I already know how to drive.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, neither does Reigen.”
Ritsu sinks backward into his chair, snickering. From this angle, Shou is gifted with the rare sight of his eyes closed in laughter, shoulders shaking under no weight but feather-light mirth. When he manages to make Ritsu laugh, Shou feels like an old astronomer divining an eclipse, a promised portent of things to come. He stares at the phenomenon bare-eyed and more than happy to live with burnt retinas if this is the only chance he’ll get.
Shou’s eyes water from smiling. A sweet line of pain like an electric shock travels from his throat to his navel. He savors it—that’s a string in him no one but Ritsu can pull.
“Maybe I’ll be more open to taking the ride once nii-san has a license.” Ritsu gains the sharp, self-satisfied gleam in his eye he gets when he’s successfully buried an insult under three layers of mild comment: he’d rather wait years for his brother to be a fresh-faced wreck of nerves behind the wheel than even think about letting Reigen drive him somewhere.
It’s hilarious the way Ritsu is often hilarious, but Shou also hears what Ritsu doesn’t even realize he’s admitting.
“Got you! I knew you wanted to go!” Shou crows in triumph.
Ritsu glances away, lips pursed, pouting at being caught in possession of feelings and preferences that aren’t perfectly accommodating to other people.
“There’s a good trail out there. I like hiking,” he mutters.
“See? And they couldn’t even ask?” Shou sprawls on his back across Ritsu’s bedroom floor. “Why did they need two telepaths and some dude who walked out of Prince of Tennis who barely wanted to be there, when they could have saved a seat for the coolest guy in Seasoning City who did them a solid he had no obligation to?”
“Takenaka-senpai was the only telepath they brought. The Shiratori brothers didn't want to intrude either.” Ritsu spins his chair around, casually returning to his homework like he hasn’t, with a single sentence, just brained Shou in the back of the head. “And you don’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to minding your manners, Suzuki. Besides, I told you, I’m fine with not tagging along.”
“Say that again,” Shou whispers.
Ritsu looks skeptically over his shoulder. “That I don’t feel like going? Or that you’re rude?”
“The telepath. The name of the telepath. Say it again.” Shou sits up, a slight ringing in his ears.
“Takenaka Momozou. You—” Ritsu tilts his head. “You must have met him. He plays tennis. You just mentioned that. He was at Reigen-san’s birthday, too.”
Shou curls in on himself, head in his hands. Takenaka, Takenaka. The guy who looked at Shou funny before fleeing like he had fire licking at his heels. Shou had assumed he was the fire, that the great big blinking neon sign above him that said, Your presence is a slight against Ritsu and for this transgression you may be put to the sword was read and understood.
The fire was probably Shou’s after all, but it wasn’t one he lit on purpose.
“Huh, that guy can read minds?” Shou chokes casually through a painfully-tightening throat. “Didn’t come up.”
Ritsu slips out of his chair and takes a few hesitant steps toward him. Shou watches socked feet pad closer—did he inherit those socks from his brother? Ritsu mentioned once that most of his clothes are hand-me-downs, which must be increasingly tough as Ritsu only continues to solidify his position as the taller of the two. Shou should take him shopping sometime—
“Hey.” Ritsu’s knees bend somewhere around Shou’s eyeline.
A hand lands on his shoulder. Shou doesn’t flinch, because he never flinches. But it’d be a miracle, if it were anyone other than Ritsu, that he doesn’t even feel the urge.
“‘Sup?” Shou lifts his head slowly.
Haloed by the desk lamp behind him, the furrow of Ritsu’s worried brow softens his face into an icon of beneficence. Shou feels like a penitent seeking a blessing. In the intimate quietude of Ritsu’s bedroom, this free gift of comfort bestowed upon him, after his pathetically obvious surge of panic, is nothing less than embarrassing as all hell.
Part of it could be overflow from earlier: the rightful humiliation he didn’t know he should feel yet, detonating on a delay. Whatever the source, there’s plenty of mortification to go around.
“If it makes you feel better,” Ritsu says, the skeptical slant to his mouth adding it probably won’t, “he almost never actually does it.”
Shou tilts his head, caught off guard and knocked a little closer to emotional stability through sheer confusion.
“He’s a mind reader who doesn’t read minds?”
Ritsu shrugs.
“He has some trick that silences other people’s thoughts. Apparently, telepathy is overwhelming. Just being in a room together doesn’t mean he’s looked inside your head.”
“Oh.” Shou chuckles in a convincing facsimile of relief. He almost has himself fooled. “Guess he and I have more in common than I thought. Psychic powers are a pain, huh?”
A not-quite-laugh huffs out of Ritsu’s nose. He gently flicks Shou’s ear before standing up and returning to his desk. They slide back into the easy task of sharing proximity.
A long few seconds later, hunched over a book, Ritsu softly asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Ritsu,” Shou replies. He grabs his phone and pulls up the blog of one Mezato Ichi, which, until now, has served only as his secret source for knowing exactly when to drop by and interrupt Salt Middle School Student Council meetings that Ritsu hasn’t figured out yet. “I’m peachy.”