Chapter Text
March came in colder than it did most years. The children of Salt Elementary School walked home bundled in thick jackets and knitted mittens. They made games of puffing out frozen breaths and writing their names into the frost of passing windows. Shigeo Kageyama walked behind two of his classmates, though he did not go home.
Instead he toed along the edge of a cobblestone sidewalk, arms out for balance, off in a direction opposite of home. His backpack bulged out like a turtle shell, heavier than usual. It was packed with the flannel pajamas and a tooth brush Mogami had asked him to bring. Mogami had not given a reason why.
Mob didn’t like the extra weight, but it kept him centered on the cobblestone rail.
The two 10-year-old classmates ahead of him took the right street. Mob continued straight, tracing the stone.
“After this, can we go back to the park?” Mob asked. He wobbled, tilting his head over his shoulder to ask Mogami directly.
“We go to the park every day.” Mogami answered. He walked the sidewalk, thin silver hair catching sunlight and twists of icy wind. The hollow pockets beneath his eyes were deep, but not unkind, intently watchful of Mob who dipped and wavered with each balance-beam step.
“Yeah, because I like it.”
“We’re doing something different today, Mob.”
“Where are we going today?”
“To my house, Mob.”
“What’s there, Shishou?”
Mogami did not answer. He stowed his gloveless hands into the pockets of his coat, chin tilted up to the sun. Thins patches of snow blanketed the ground, a rare sight. They made the world bright.
“Why do you want to go back to the park, Mob?”
“I want to play with the fountain water some more.”
“You do that every day.”
“Because I like it.”
The two lapsed back into silence. Mob shot quick, furtive glances over his shoulder. Sometimes to Mogami, sometimes to the opposite direction where the park lay, as if eager to entertain the thought that they would turn back around.
“I want to do the trick you taught me,” Mob elaborated. He balled and unballed his hands, hopeful twitches of his fingers. The snowbank to his right leaked away into the grass.
“Which trick?”
“The trick.”
“I’ve taught you many tricks.”
“Where I make the water into a ball and spin it.”
“That is a good trick.”
“It’s Ritsu’s favorite.”
Mob stopped with the tiniest pinwheel of his arms. Mogami kept forward, a tall, thin, solid figure. He overtook Mob, and the low-setting sun vanished behind him. Mob stood, silent, in Mogami’s shadow.
“…So can we go back to the park?”
“I told you. Today is different.”
A hesitant step. A small stumble. “I don’t want today to be different.”
“Sorry Mob. It is.”
“What’s at your house, Shishou?”
Mogami paused. He wait for Mob to stop too. A sad weight set into his eyes, and he motioned Mob over closer. Hesitant, Mob dismounted from the cobblestone and padded to Mogami’s side. He threaded his fingers along his backpack strap anxiously.
Mogami motioned behind him. “Let’s sit on that bench a minute. We can talk.”
Mob’s fingers curled. “There’s benches at the park.”
“We’re not going to the park, okay Mob? There’s something serious for us to talk about.”
Mogami edged toward the bench, his movements stiff as if his joints ached in the cold. He settled into it, speckled under the shadows of damp budding leaves. He patted the spot beside him. Mob waited, uncertain, until Mogami motioned toward it again. “Sit with me a moment, Mob.”
“Why aren’t you telling me what’s at your house?” Mob asked. He shrugged off his backpack and set it at his feet before climbing onto the bench.
“There’s nothing special there. It’s just the safest place for us to go.”
Mob’s brow scrunched in confusion. He swung his legs. “Why? What’s dangerous?”
Mogami leaned back, face sinking into the shade of the blooming tree. He breathed deep, eyes flickering to Mob in beats. “Would you believe me if I said it was you?”
Mob blinked, then his face split into a grin. He let out a small laugh and rocked forward. “You’re joking with me. Let’s go back to the park.”
Mogami’s face did not change. He stared deeper into Mob’s eyes, until Mob looked away, fidgeting again.
“Why would I be lying to you?”
Mob shrugged, eyes still averted. “I dunno.”
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“It’s not a joke. It’s something very sad, and very unfair, and I’ve kept it hidden from you until now so you would be happy. But I can’t wait forever, because eventually you’ll trigger it. Eventually you’ll get powerful enough to hurt someone without meaning to. I want to protect you from that.”
Mob shook his head. “I’ve used my powers on people and it never hurts them, like when I float Ritsu sometimes.”
“That’s not the dangerous part.”
“Is it the tricks you taught me?”
“No, not that.”
Mob lapsed into silence. Damp wind knitted between them, drawing a chill to the exposed skin of Mob’s neck and face. Mogami had no visible reaction. He only stared as Mob curled into himself on the bench. Mob looked into his own palms, face screwed in concentration. When he looked back up, determination burned behind his eyes.
“What you’re saying doesn’t make sense, Shishou. Your powers are stronger, and you’re not dangerous. So why am I?”
“Who said I wasn’t dangerous, Mob?”
Mob had no immediate answer. He curled away just slightly, wracked with another shiver.
“Mob, have I lied to you ever before about your powers?”
“No, Shishou.”
“Don’t you think then that perhaps I’m telling you this for a very serious reason?”
Mob’s heart quickened in his chest, hands squeezing against the underside of the bench. He hopped off. “Let’s stop talking about this. I’m not dangerous so you don’t have to worry, Shishou.”
“Sit back down, Mob. This is important. I need you to understand.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t hurt the people around you.”
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“I don’t hurt people with my powers though.”
“What if someone attacked you?”
“Why would someone attack me?”
“Let’s just say they do.”
Mob chewed his lip, nervous. “I wouldn’t hurt them, Shishou. I don’t like to fight. I’d put up my barrier until they stopped attacking. And that’s all I’d do.”
The chill down Mob’s spine was all he needed to understand he’d given the wrong answer. A darker glint bloomed in Mogami’s eyes, a rigidity, chilling and dense and authoritative in its aura. Mob was not used to feeling his master’s aura; he was not used to seeing it reared to the forefront. It was a black thing, an unspoken threat, but of what Mob could not tell.
“That, Mob—that’s what will do it. You’re just like I was, when it happened to me. Naïve,” Mogami answered. His words were razors. Mob could not understand why, but it drew panicked tears to the corners of his eyes. His master was rarely frightening, and Mob had no way to handle it. “You’ll hurt everyone that way.”
“I wouldn’t hurt anyone! I’d just use my barrier!”
Mogami rose from the bench, tall, resolute like a statue, as if he had not heard Mob speak. The sun crowned his head, a fiery aura brimming around his dark face. Thrown in shadows, stone, instantly cold.
“Have you ever seen my barrier, Mob…? Have I ever shown it to you?”
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Mob stood too, backing toward the sidewalk. “You’re not acting like normal today, Shishou.”
“I told you, today is different.”
“I don’t want today to be different.”
Mogami motioned Mob away, encouraging him to build up the gap that had erupted between them. Mob complied, toeing back until his heels knocked against the cobblestone barrier.
“I need to show you what a psychic’s barrier becomes, Mob. It’s important you understand before it happens to you, which will be soon, trust me. Step back and watch.”
Mob took another step back. His feet crossed into the street’s edge.
Mogami breathed in deep, teeth set tight in his jaw, hollow eyes cold and sharp. He raised a hand, pointing to the tree above them. Mob looked up. A gnarled branch twisted up toward the sun. Plump, new, spring-green buds dotted its surface. A few pink blossoms curled outward, browned in the frost and cold. Nestled in a cluster of buds was a single robin, swollen belly twitching with a melody.
Mogami’s hand clenched, and the air snapped, and Mob yelped at the appearance of a churning, gossamer barrier, its presence like acid, its surface a mesh of razors.
A flutter followed, its noise like dead autumn leaves shaking down. Ribbons of young buds and shreds of pink petals rained to the bench, thick and dewy and bleeding. Off to the right of the bench, a harsher crashing down followed. It was a muted thud like a stone dropping, and came with a flurry of thin shredded feathers.
Mob recoiled, his every nerve on fire. “Why’d you do that?!”
“The barrier did it. All I did was give up control for a moment.”
Mob didn’t care about the answer. He scrambled forward, crashing to his knees into the wet grass. His knees came out skinned, pants bearing thin slits. His skin throbbed until it shot numb in the cold. His hands stopped just shy of touching the fallen bird. Its little chest fluttered rapidly, head twitching to frantic beats and bloodied wings flapping against the dewy grass.
78%
“Shishou you hurt it! You hurt it!”
“I know.”
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Mob’s hands hovered over the bloodied underbelly, twitching. In a moment of decision, he lifted it, cradled in his hands. He extended it to his master, like a beggar.
“Fix it! Fix the bird, please Shishou!”
“I can’t.” Mogami’s face became unreadable. “And you should get away from it too.”
“I need to help it.”
“You’re too dangerous, Mob. You can’t help it.”
Dangerous…
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Unbidden, a swirling, churning membrane contoured itself to the thin region of air around Mob’s fingers. It came into existence with a snap, its surface an oil stain of oversaturated colors, harsh and dense and sharp. Mob yanked his fingers back, but not before the barrier shot out to its full radius.
Hardly a noise. The grass around him exploded into fibrous ribbons, spraying beads of fluid. Flower stems snapped and bled out glass. Twigs ripped themselves to pieces at fibrous, frayed breaks. And feathers, shredded clean, the damage lost unseen in the maelstrom of tearing grass and leaves and stems. Mob felt no distinction as the razor barrier sunk into ground and grass and flesh. Only the sharp slash of red against the leaking green and melting swaths of white betrayed what he’d done.
“That is the barrier I am talking about Mob. It’s triggered by stress, and once it’s here, it does not leave. Nothing is safe from you past this point.”
Mob shot away. He stumbled and collided with the asphalt, splayed shaking and teary-eyed in the road. The oil stain barrier around him made itself seen in thin, shimmering swaths where the light struck. The rest of it left invisible to the naked eye.
It persisted, against his will, against his control.
“It’s supposed to protect you. And it does. It shreds anything living in its path. It does not discriminate. It does not make exceptions.”
Mob stared down his own bubble, paralyzed in horror. The shimmering skin around him was foreign, alien, new, terrifying. Nothing like the soft gossamer webbing that kept impacts blunt and painless. This was alive; this breathed and lashed. This filled him with unbridled horror. He did not feel the tears slip down his cheeks.
“Please fix this, Shishou. I’m scared.”
“I can’t fix it. I can’t fix the bird: Its wings have been shredded. It can’t fly anymore. And I can’t fix you.”
A rush of wind, a car arcing around him to get past. Mob was in the road. His legs wouldn’t obey the twitch of his mind, urging them to move, to get out. He was afraid not for himself, but for the living things in the passing cars, the ones that may slip through the edges of the vicious thing engulfing him. Mob put a hand out to Mogami. “Please…”
“If I took your hand, Mob, my fingers would shred.”
Another rush, another car going past. He shivered, and let out a small sob. The oilslick would not disappear. The prickling sense of knives decorating his boundary would not vanish. He swallowed, focused, willed it.
Nothing.
“Get up, Mob. Get up and follow me. Keep your head low and keep a distance from anyone else. If that barrier touches someone, they’re no better off than that bird.”
“Please help it…”
“I’ll carry your backpack, Mob. Follow a few feet behind me.”
Shaking, Mob got his hands beneath him. He shoved against the asphalt, world spinning, chest fluttering. He felt a twisting brokenness inside him that slashed his thoughts. He saw only his master, wanted only the comfort of his reassurance. He found himself beaten down by a cruelty he’d never witnessed in the man.
“I told Ritsu I’d be home for dinner. I need to be home. He’s waiting for me. He’s gonna worry, Shishou.”
At this, Mogami took pause. The rigidity of his face eased back just a fraction, though he kept himself turned mostly away from Mob. The gap between them stagnated. “It’s better that you don’t. How would you go home now? Just live your life? It would take only the tiniest mishap to drop your family dead, Mob. You can’t do that to them. You can’t put them in that kind of danger.”
The thought fell meaningless to Mob. Too much, too severe to wrap his head around. “I told Ritsu I’d be home…”
“Is that so important that you’d put his life in danger?”
Mob did not answer. He curled his arms into his chest, feeling hollow, a tense pain where his heart should be. “…I can’t go home?”
“No.” Mogami maintained the distance between them, though he crouched to Mob’s height. “But that, Mob, is what my home is for. I can handle you there, and keep everyone you love safe. That’s why we’re going to my house.”
Mob nodded through his tears, silent, and reached a hand out for Mogami to take. It was impulse, seeking the warmth and strength of his master. Mogami stayed far away. He did not reach for the hand.
The barrier swam between them, just out of focus. Mob remembered, and dropped his hand, and felt a coldness in his body he’d never felt before.
He fell in line behind Mogami, center of the sidewalk, and walked the rest of the path in silence. He flinched away from every rustle of grass, every twitch of a branch, seeing animals which were not there. Mob did not harm another living being on the walk. Only the grassblades at the edge of the concrete sliced themselves away.
…..
The sun had dropped well below the skyline. Inky blackness claimed the sky, and 9-year-old Ritsu Kageyama did his homework by lamplight in the corner of his room. He sat tucked against his desk, his colorful spiral-bound notebook open to a pasted-in print out of times tables. Ritsu covered the columns with his left hand and wrote out the equations by memory on the blank page next to it. He stopped after 12x12, smiling to himself. Mob still struggled with these. Ritsu brimmed at the thought of showing Mob, of helping his brother with his own homework.
A clunking of feet sounded against the stairs, a rap of knuckles against his door, which then eased itself open. His mother leaned into the gap. Her hands braced against the door frame. “Ritsu, dinner is in five minutes. Go wash your hands. Shigeo too—tell your brother to wash up.”
Ritsu set his pencil down, head tilted to his mother. His mouth set in confusion. “Niisan’s not home yet.”
Mrs. Kageyama rubbed her hands in the lap of her apron. She glanced around the room, as if Mob might appear by sheer inspection.
“It’s dinner time. Shigeo knows to be home for dinner.”
“He said he’d be home.” Ritsu pushed himself from his chair. A loose few crayons rolled to the floor of his room.
Mrs. Kageyama’s hands had stilled in her apron. “Did he tell you where he was going?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
Ritsu glanced out the window. He investigated the blackened streets, swamped under darkness save for the few pools of street lights. Tree branches swayed like slats in front of the yellow pods. Nothing else stirred. Nothing else appeared.
Anxiety set in as a deep, sick feeling in the pit of Ritsu’s stomach. He teased the corner of his notebook, shearing it just slightly where his hard work skimmed along the stop of the page.
“No, I don’t know.”
…
Arataka Reigen shut down his psychic agency two months ago. He hadn’t bankrupted it, he hadn’t fallen behind on rent, and he hadn’t encountered any legal trouble either, despite the fudged nature of his practicing license. It had been a purely voluntary decision motivated by nothing more complex than his own dying interest.
It had been too many cold, quiet hours staring at white walls. Too many afternoons with nothing more than a swath of smoke for company, burnt from three cigarette packs every day. It had been too many people happily conned out of their money and strung along on an act that made Reigen feel sicker to emulate every day. It made Reigen’s every connection feel plastic. He almost wanted to be called on his fraud, if only so he could act like a real person in front of someone again.
When it finally did happen though, it happened with a knife, with an upturned desk, and with a barely-restrained possessed man immobilized against Reigen’s carpet while a shallow bloody cut leaked along the length of Reigen’s cheek.
Reigen took the Spirits and Such sign down the next day.
He had only one back up plan, and when the meager stash of rainy-day savings ran dry with no new ideas at his disposal, Reigen returned to the office with a new sign.
Arataka Reigen: Private Investigator.
Reigen himself was plenty nosy, skilled enough at talking his way out of conflict, and more than used to spending hours and hours in isolation. It seemed, if nothing else, an okay fit for him. And he turned out to be decently skilled at it
The cheating spouses were always careless. Most weren’t paranoid enough to believe they were being followed, and Reigen swept up evidence easily on them in the form of photos snapped from his car or receipts dug from the trash. The work sickened something deep within him, but after a month, Reigen appreciated the adultery cases far more than the cases of missing people. Cheating spouses were easy to find; missing people were not.
He’d grown numb to the act of passing along voyeuristic photos of loved ones caught in thralls with friends and coworkers. He felt little of watching their partner gasp and keen and sob into the box of tissues Reigen kept ever-stocked on his desk. That sort of pain was always preferable to the glassy, hollow defeat he’d come to recognize in the eyes of people who’d been told once too many to give up hope of finding someone. The loved ones of missing people. It was something he felt on sight, something that knocked against his ribs and left a lingering ache, something that grew denser and more consuming as Reigen studied the lives of people he knew he’d never find.
He was afraid of becoming jaded, or else becoming swallowed in others’ grief, but he was much too worried about rent, food, and heating to entertain the idea of quitting anymore.
…
Reigen unlocked the office every morning one hour before his agency doors opened. He needed to turn on the heat by hand, and it always took as long to shake the damp iciness of the night spent unoccupied. He brought his extra-heavy jacket every morning, a pair of threadbare mittens, and warmed himself around a cup of coffee and a bright white monitor while the sun rose and the office breathed to life under the crackling heart of the radiator. He’d gotten an electronic newspaper subscription to pass the time, because reading the news seemed like the sort of thing a PI ought to do every morning.
In early March, Reigen sat at his desk and read the news. Nothing set this day apart from any other: his breath puffed, his office sat bleak against the yet-to-rise sun, his radiator crackled. Reigen flicked on the desk lamp, which bleached his papers and left the rest of the room in dismal blackness. His laptop monitor lit his face, barely awake, with the mug of coffee suspended by his lips. Reigen soaked in an article about a missing 10-year-old boy whom he had never met. The article pegged the boy as “Shigeo Kageyama”, and his family was desperate for information.
Sad… Reigen thought, as he sipped his coffee, and scrolled past the article, and dismissed any lingering thoughts about the boy or his family from the forefront of his mind.