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He finds Mob in the park sitting cross-legged underneath a leafless tree, glancing up through bare branches criss-crossing across the sky. It’s deep December and the ground is cold and not particularly comfortable when he takes a seat by Mob’s side. Their breaths come out in little puffs of fog. Teru’s pretty sure it’s supposed to flurry later in the evening, but right now the town is chill and anticipatory for snowfall.
“Anything interesting up there?”
Mob cocks his head, but doesn’t exactly turn to look at him just yet. “That plant.”
“Hm?”
He points up to a small tangled growth nestled in the crook of a branch. It looks almost like a bird’s nest, messy but unassuming. But there didn’t seem to be anything particularly strange about it—
Wait, no, that’s wrong.
“It’s possessed,” Mob says, just as Teru realizes it. “It’s not a powerful spirit. It’s really small...”
“I almost didn’t sense it,” Teru admits, narrowing his eyes. “Should we just get rid of it?” He can't even lie, after recent events, he can’t say he has fond feelings for spirits possessing plants. This one is small and would be awfully flammable.
“Not yet,” Mob says, and Teru lowers a hand almost in disappointment. “It’s small. It’s not that powerful. It hasn’t hurt anyone, all it’s done is trap us here—”
“Wait, what?”
He reaches out again, almost bewildered at how careless he’d been. Mob is right, the spirit is small and unassuming, but now that he’s looking for it, he can feel it—a delicate, subtle barrier, like roots gently enclosing the both of them inside, under the bare-branch canopy of the tree.
It’s not an incredibly strong barrier. Mob could break it easily. It wouldn’t be a problem for Teru, too. He’d just walked right into it, like a trap, but Mob had been sitting inside so innocently and peacefully.
“Don’t burn it, Hanazawa-kun,” Mob says, as if reading his mind.
“It trapped us here...”
“It’s not a strong spirit. It’s not a strong barrier or a strong trap. It just wants to keep us here. I wonder why?”
Who knows what spirits want? “Maybe it’s lonely.”
Mob hums and just adjusts his scarf more snugly around his neck. Like this, he looks... ordinary, plain, almost painfully so. Like he didn’t have the power to just rip the plant forcibly off the tree, or uproot the tree itself, or level the park or even city if he felt like it.
But Mob is Mob, and Mob wouldn’t do that. And Teru is Teru, and he wouldn’t exactly mind burning the plant to cinders if it weren’t for Mob. And somewhere in the back of his head, in the sensation of static power of the aura he’d harnessed since birth, was the knowledge that he could do almost anything with this power if he wanted to. If he wanted to, he could burn every tree here down to the ground...
Obviously, he doesn’t want to. But he could. And it’s a bizarre kind of intrusive thought, and sometimes walking among common people who couldn’t levitate cars or break concrete with a thought was almost surreal.
But maybe that’s just leftover thinking from back before he met Mob. He’s a different person now.
Honest.
“Do you really think ghosts get lonely?”
“Eh?”
“You said that just now.”
“Did I?” He must be a little out of it. Teru shakes his head. “Hmm... it’s possible, right? Spirits used to be human, and people get lonely. Would that change after they die?” What a morbid thought. “It sounds like it might even be more lonely for them, now that I think about it.”
“Do you think so?”
“Do you?”
Mob almost smiles. “You might be right.” He toys with a loose thread at the end of his winter scarf. The motion is strangely fascinating and Teru can’t quite look away—
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says thoughtfully. “Especially after talking to Dimple. He always wanted to be a god. He said it was unfinished business, the reason he was unable to pass on, but he wasn’t being entirely honest.”
“Really?” He’s still not entirely sure what to think of Dimple, honestly, but he thinks it’s fair to have mixed feelings about the ghost who’d brainwashed him.
It’s starting to snow, he realizes vaguely. Large, soft flakes floating slowly down and melting on contact with the pavement and Mob’s clothes.
“There was another reason he wanted to stay,” Mob says, and his smile is small and almost tentative and impossible to look away from. “He just wanted a friend.”
Teru stares at him for a moment, at his slightly wind-ruffled hair, the tinges of snowflakes on his shoulders, his cheeks red with winter cold.
Then he just laughs. Mob blinks, bewildered. “Hanazawa-kun?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, between giggles. Oh, he’s actually giggling, covering his mouth, trying not to be rude, but— “That’s just like you, Kageyama-kun. You’re just that kind of person. So kind, even an evil spirit who wants to be a god would want to be your friend.”
“If you put it that way...”
“It’s a good thing, I promise. It’s because you’re just that amazing.” So amazing, even a hot-blooded egomaniac esper who thought the world revolved him would want to be his friend, too. And more.
Not that Mob would know. He just cocks his head again, almost owl-like. There are a few times Teru has to honestly hold himself back from closing the thin distance between them and kiss his kind, amazing friend who had defeated and humiliated him and changed his life. This is one of them, and it’s more and more difficult to resist each instance as it occurs. But he puts in an effort to try.
He just leans in against Mob’s shoulder, grinning at the added warmth. “So, is that going to be your new modus operandi? Are you going to befriend spirits now instead of exorcise them?”
“Is that a bad idea? This one is small and it’s not hurting anyone...”
“No, I think if it’s you, you could definitely do it. I believe in you.”
Mob brightens up. “You do?”
“I always do. If you can win over me and Dimple-kun and everyone else... look, you can do anything. You can do everything. I really, really believe that.”
He’s probably coming on too strong, isn’t he? He could feel his face heating up. There’s something strange about this spirit’s barrier, trapping them inside, its aura thin and delicate like leaves or vines... he clears his throat and plays with his phone. “Anyway. Maybe we can find out more about that spirit if we know more about its host plant. Do you know what it is?”
Mob shakes his head. Mob can do anything, Teru believes that, but maybe identifying odd plants by sight is a little too obscure a power. He hums and tilts his phone up to snap a picture of the tangled mass of vines. The cell camera won’t pick up on the occult glow, the flickering figure of the mouse-sized spirit nestled in the plant growth. It blinks pale eyes down at him and Mob, but doesn’t venture down from the branch. It’s like a skittish cat or something... but it had trapped them, and it seemed to be getting bolder.
“I’ll google it and see what I can find out. What do you think, Kageyama-kun? Is it really just lonely, or do you think it needs water or something?”
“Eh? Well...” Mob flounders and sweats a little, the way he often does when it comes to making decisions. “I-I don’t know. Um, would it need water if it’s all the way up in the tree?”
“Good point.” Where are its roots? Not that Teru’s a plant expert, either. “Or maybe the host plant is sick. Think you could heal it with your power?”
Mob toys with that frayed end of his scarf again. “I’ll do it if I have to, but I don’t want another divine tree.”
Also a good idea... Teru flicks through pictures of plants after plants, offers the phone out towards Mob so that they could browse the photos together, tries not to notice the warmth of Mob’s fingers as they reach out to touch his, around his cell.
“The plant has to be the key to this. Why would a spirit, even a weak one, possess such a small plant? If it wanted company, would it really stay out here in the park? If it wanted to trap someone, there are busier places it could haunt.”
“It’s not an evil spirit,” Mob says.
Teru pauses as he finally lands on a match in the rows of pictures of plants. Oh... that can’t be it, right? He can feel his face heating up in realization. “It might be a mischievous one.”
“Huh?”
He can feel the spirit’s barrier wrapping in around them, like a flower’s petals closing at night. A ghost haunting a plant like this— specifically a plant like this—sure has to have a crooked sense of humor. Especially at this time of year, deep in December and the holidays.
Mob blinks again, once, slowly, like a cat. “What do you mean?”
He means... wow, how can he put it? He means that recognizing the plant and its season and the fact that it had trapped them in here kind of painted a suddenly clear picture of the spirit’s intentions. And it’s not helping when it pokes its head out from the plant growth, makes a small chirruping noise that almost sounds like laughter.
He has this problem sometimes, or often, when he looks at Mob and is just slightly overwhelmed by admiration and affection and the hopeless sappy desire to hold his hand. Or kiss... his cheek. The impulse can be pretty strong sometimes, but he can’t help but suspect that it might just be intensifying thanks to that spirit’s barrier. He’s an esper, he shouldn’t be that easily influenced by a low-level spirit. But maybe he just has that helpless a crush.
And he still hasn’t answered the question. Mob gives him an odd look. “Are you all right, Hanazawa-kun?”
“A-ah? I’m fine.” He laughs nervously, stares between the phone to the plant and back again. Unfortunately, it looks like a fit. “I... think I found out what that plant is. And why the spirit is trying to trap people underneath it.”
“Really? What is it?”
Teru tells him. And then, after a moment when Mob continues to look amazingly clueless, tells him what the plant is usually used for. Mob stares at him, curious face slowly dawning with realization.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“People really do that?”
“It's a holiday tradition.”
“And we should—?”
“Uh.” He wants to. But... “Of course not. I could pull it off the tree, or break the barrier, or just exorcise it—”
“I want to try it,” Mob says.
Teru isn’t really sure he’s heard correctly. “You what?”
“I want to try it.” Mob’s face is a little red from the winter cold, but it might not just be from that. “That’s what the plant is for... it might make the spirit happy.” He adjusts the end of his scarf again, glances down at his gloved hands. And, in a tentative murmur— “It might make me a little happy, too.”
He has no idea what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. He just takes Mob’s hands in his, leans in close before he could lose his nerve and kisses him.
He can feel Mob’s breath catch a little, feel his fingers twitch against his, hear him make a soft sound as he shyly kisses back. He can hear the spirit purr above them. He closes his eyes into the kiss but imagines he could catch a glimpse of rapidly blossoming leaves and petals overhead, falling like snow.
-
“Oi, Mob. Think you could check in on something for me on your way home?”
“What is it, shishou?”
“Apparently there’s a cursed mistletoe plant in the park trapping passersby underneath and prompting them to...” Reigen waves a hand vaguely. “You know.”
“Eh?”
Reigen peers at his student suspiciously, but Mob’s poker face doesn’t give anything away. Mob didn't even know about the kuchisake-onna, but surely he has to know what mistletoe means...
“Anyway, do you have time to drop by and investigate? Exorcise it if it’s going to be a pest.”
Mob tilts his head. “I already took care of it.”
“You did?”
Mob smiles. In his schoolbag, contained in a glass jar, a small mouse-sized spirit blinks sleepily and nestles deeper into a clump of stems and leaves and white mistletoe berries. It’s a much healthier host plant than before, so it’s happy.
It would make a good ornament, too. Mob’s looking forward to hanging it over the door to Teru’s apartment when he visits.