Chapter Text
Daffodils: One of the first flowers to bloom in early spring, they symbolize rebirth and new beginnings.
The first daffodil bloomed in the garden, signifying the beginning of spring. The funny looking flower sprouted in her garden every early spring like clockwork. She never liked the ugly little things, bright yellow and as generic looking as any child’s drawing of a flower. Her father had always insisted that the gardeners plant them, claiming that they brought good luck and new beginnings in the springtime. This year she looks at the flower with a new light, she felt warmed by the yellow flowers that sprouted before the rest. It was the first daffodil of spring that reminded her of change.
It had taken days, weeks, to convince her father. Ever since the accident he had become fearfully overprotective. Minori was barely allowed to leave the house anymore without someone next to her at all times. It wasn’t like she left the premises very often nowadays anyways. She had started to seclude herself more at school, stepping down from her position as top dog. The thought of even looking at her old “friends” made her sick to her stomach.
Even so, her father was skeptical. Going from a prestigious private school to a public school that was a twenty-minute train ride away from home sounded ridiculous, and it was, but she was still good at playing at her father’s heartstrings. He eventually agreed. She’ll spend her third year of middle school at Salt Middle.
Minori Asigiri looked in the mirror. The uniform, although brand new and never worn, feels almost too familiar. Her reflection stared back at her, wearing a uniform that she’s only seen in her nightmares. She touches the fabric of the skirt; the material is a bit coarser than she had imagined it. The whiteness of the top was crisp and unsettling, in her more recent dreams the same whiteness was stained in crimson blood that had spilled from the bodies of other students. Minori closes her eyes and clenched her fists, long nails threaten to dig into the skin of her palm. She refused to look into a mirror for almost an entire month after the accident, too sick to look at her own reflection when all she saw looking back at her was a disgusting girl and a murderer. Even now she avoids her own reflection when she can.
She takes a few deep breaths that slowly lead her back into reality. She grabs her schoolbag off of her bed and checks her reflection one last time. Minori Asigiri sees an average looking girl staring back at her, a girl who is ready to start over. She pinches her cheeks to remind herself that she is awake.
~~~~~
The train ride is long and stuffy. Minori had gotten to the stop ten minutes early just to make sure she wouldn’t miss the train, and it showed up ten minutes late. Her father had told her to let their driver take her to school, at least on the first day, but she insisted that she take the train. She figures that she’ll stick out enough at her new school, the last thing she wants is to show up at the school gates in some fancy car being driven by a chauffeur. The train crowded and Minori is standing and holding on to a bar for dear life. She had heard that the morning train was busy but she had no idea that she would be shoulder to shoulder with a million other strangers. Others lean and push into her, her grip tightens on her schoolbag as a person bumps into her and nearly takes it with them. By the time the train reaches her stop in Seasoning City she has to push through a crowd three people deep to get to the door.
Minori leaned against a bench in the train station and opened up her schoolbag. She pulled out a manila folder that had a map of the city and how to get to Salt Middle from the train station. There were a few other papers in the folder too. After the incident, her father hired a man to track down information on the mysterious esper that had driven out the spirit inside of Minori. He left without a name, all they knew about him is that he was an average looking middle schooler that went by “Mob”. Even after all of the time spent in that world with him, Mob was the only name she knew him by. Minori shuffled through the papers of information that had been collected and traced her fingers over black ink. Shigeo Kageyama.
She replayed the name over and over in her head, afraid that she might forget it again. She wanted to get it right, she wanted to make a good first impression. Well, obviously this wasn’t going to be Mob’s first impression of her, but she’s a different person now. Or at least she hopes that she’s different. Minori doesn’t feel different. In fact, she feels worse.
~~~~~
Salt Middle School is painfully average compared the the lavish private school Minori had been accustomed to. A white exterior with a white interior, a sparse courtyard, and very small, plain looking classrooms. Needless to say, it was no fancy private school. She held tight to her schoolbag as she walked up the broad staircase, following along with the large crowd of students. Class 3-A, the first classroom on the right. The classroom, like all the others, was very simple. A chalkboard and a teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom. The lack of windows only made the stark whiteness of the walls stick out even more. Twenty desks in rows took up the majority of the classroom. It didn’t look like there were any assigned seats and the teacher sitting at her desk didn’t reprimand Minori for picking out her own seat in the front row. Minori knew that she didn’t want to stick out too much, it was already strange for a student to suddenly transfer to a new school in their last year of middle school and that fact was bound to raise some questions from other students.
Minori crossed her legs and rested her hands in her lap. Her foot bounced restlessly and she picked at the skin around her fingernails. Nervousness set in her stomach like a boulder. ‘This was a bad idea. A very bad idea.’ she thinks to herself. Every fiber of her being is suddenly regretting this decision, but it was far too late to turn back now. What was she even going to say to Mob when she sees him? She had no plan of action, no script, nothing. ‘If I get up now and leave no one will have to know I was here. I can tell Daddy that he was right and I-‘
Her thoughts are interrupted by the sudden presence of a girl standing in front of her desk, Minori looked up from her seat and was greeted with a friendly smile. “Hello, you must be Asigiri Minori right? I’m Mezato, head of the newspaper club.”
Minori acknowledged the other girl with a nervous smile, “Hi, it’s very nice to meet you.”
The blond haired girl talked out a small notebook and a pen. “You’re from Brown Sugar, that private middle school, right? I’d love to talk to you about why you transferred, are you free during lunch?”
‘Why the hell does she know so much about me?’ Minori bit the inside of her cheek as she felt more nerves build up in the pit of her stomach, “I, um, I really rather not talk about it. Personal reasons, you know?” Minori gives the girl a sheepish smile.
“Hm,” Mezato looked Minori up and down, like she was studying her. Minori picked at the skin around her fingernails again, the sensitive flesh stinging under the scraping of her nails. Mezato writes something down in her notebook and then snaps it shut, “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I’ll always be around.” Mezato flashes her one more smile before she walks past the desk to take her own seat. Minori feels a trickle of blood run down her thumb and wipes it off on the backside of her skirt.
‘One bad first impression already.’ Minori looks around to notice that the room has filled up quite a bit. She quickly looks over every student but doesn’t see anyone that resembles Mob. In retrospect, it was probably dumb for her to assume that Mob would be in the same class as her. She glances at the clock, two minutes until classes start. Minori was going to have to spend her lunch period looking for Mob. ‘Would it be creepy to just try and track him down? Would he think-‘ Out of the corner of her eye, Minori sees a student black haired pass by her desk. The aura radiating off of him was unmistakable, it chilled her to the bone. Shigeo Kageyama. She’s too afraid to turn around and see if it’s really him. Too afraid their eyes will meet, to afraid she’ll throw up if she sees his face, afraid, afraid, afraid. Minori didn’t notice that she was chewing up the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.
Before Minori had more time to contemplate turning around and facing Mob, the teacher moved to the front of the room and started class. She introduced herself and then began to take roll. She listed off names that Minori didn’t know and didn’t care about. She waits on the edge of her seat for her name to be called and for his name to be called. ‘Will he even recognize my name when he hears it?’ Minori feel like she already knows the answer to that question.
“Shigeo Kageyama?”
“Present.”
Minori feels her heart speed up and she begins to feel a bit queasy. It’s him. It takes every ounce of her strength to not look back to see his face. The reality of this all finally set in, Minori was here to make amends with the boy that saved her life and she can’t even bring herself to look at him.
Class moves painfully slow. Minori can’t keep herself focused on anything the teacher is saying. Sitting in the front row was a bad idea, she thinks. She feels like everyone’s eyes are on her. At one point she wants to run from the classroom and never look back. Her vision blurs. Nothing feels right and she feels grossly out of place in her own skin. Her thoughts ring in her head and block out everything else around her. ‘This was a bad idea. He’ll be so mad when he sees me. This was so dumb, so stupid! You really screwed yourself over this time, Minori!’ She almost doesn’t notice when the lunch bell rings.
Students in the classroom collect their things for lunch and start to leave. Minori sits a little too still in her seat, waiting to see if Mob will pass her desk. She catches the familiar black haired boy out of the corner of her eye and a million butterflies erupt in her stomach. She panics and without thinking, her hand reaches to grab his sleeve, “Shi- Kage- M-Mob!”
The boy stopped next to her desk and looked down at her. Minori watches as his eyes widen and almost immediately register who she is. Their eyes lock and it all feels too familiar. In her dreams and during the accident it was always Minori who looked down on Mob as he sat helplessly in his desk as she encouraged students to pick at the pathetic boy. And now she’s here, sitting on her desk, her hand tugging on Mob’s sleeve as he stares down at her with dark, unreadable eyes. Everything feels too real. Minori’s mouth goes dry.
“So it really is you, Asa…giri-san.” Something about the way he says her name sends shivers down her spine. She releases her grip on the sleeve of his shirt and folds her hands on her lap.
“Um, yeah. Can… Can we maybe talk? Please?”
Mob doesn’t give a verbal response, just a head nob as he turns and heads toward the classroom door. Minori grabs her things and quickly follows behind him. They walk in silence, she trails behind him, their footsteps out of sync. Mob leads her down the stairs and outside of the school to a small secluded area out back. He abruptly stops in his tracks and turns to stare at Minori for a long moment before finally breaking the tense silence, “Why are you here?"
Minori is a bit taken aback by how serious he sounds, “I, um, I transferred here.”
“Oh.” Mob leans against the exterior wall of the school and slides down until he’s sitting in the grass. Minori sits across from him. More silence is shared between them.
“I wanted to see you again. To properly thank you.”
Mob’s focus stays glued to the ground, “You could have just thanked me; you didn’t need to transfer schools.”
‘Well, when you put it that way...’ Minori swallows hard, “I know. I just… I needed a change of scenery anyway. I was starting to feel sick at my old school. The people there just… remind me of a person that I want to forget.”
“Is being here any easier?”
“So far? No, not at all.”
“Oh.” Minori notices Mob pulling at blades of grass through tense fists. This was all a bad idea.
“Do you… do you still think about it? Dream about it?”
“No.” A blunt response she didn’t expect. She begins to feel embarrassed for even asking. “I… haven’t thought about it at all, actually. Not until I- not until you, um.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. In and out. A look of concentration on his face. “I don’t ever want to…” A hand moves to scratch his cheek. A small frustration builds in him, not knowing what to say, how to describe these feelings, how to tell her to fuck off because he never, ever wants to think about that place again. He scratches his cheek hard enough to leave a red mark.
Mob-kun, it’s fine. You don’t have to… you don’t have to talk about it. I just. You’re the only other person who gets it. Who knows what happened there. Who… who felt the weight of six months slowly passing by.”
“We both had very different experiences there, Asagiri-san.” His voice sounds distant, it makes Minori’s blood run cold.
“Of course, I-I know. And I-I’m sorry, Mob-kun.” She fidgets with the hem of her skirt, “Sometimes… sometimes I dream that I’m there again, but watching from a third person perspective. And no matter how much I scream and cry and pull at my old self, nothing changes. I just watch myself continue to do those awful things. I always wake up with the taste of acid in my mouth, like I just vomited or something. It’s just so…”
“It’s just too real.” Mobs eyes remain downcast, but Minori can see the pained expression on his face.
“Can I… show you something?”
Mob finally looks up at her, his eyes seemingly scanning her expression. He gives her a small nod.
Minori takes a deep breath. In and out. She focuses all of her energy until suddenly her body is engulfed by a small, sickly green aura. There is just enough power to let her gently raise her schoolbag into the air, it floats a few inches above her lap. Minori is almost too afraid to see Mob’s reaction, but she looks back at him anyway.
His eyes were wide and his jaw was dropped. He was shaking. The most off putting thing about her aura is the color. Usually, the color of an espers aura just seems to match the person it radiates off of. But not Minori’s. It’s a dark, menacing shade of green that is almost hard to look at. Mob feels his stomach churn.
Minori meets Mob’s eyes and loses focus, her bag drops to the ground and spills her books and papers all over the grass. “Ah, um, oops.” Another deep breath and she’s able to focus enough energy to gather her things and put them back in her bag with her powers. Mob is still silent. “So, yeah…”
“Asagiri-san…”
“Surprised? I was too. I woke up from a nightmare a few months ago to find half of the objects in my room floating in midair,” Mob’s expression slowly goes from shocked to his usual serious expression again, but his eyes don’t lose contact with Minori’s once, “It’s not too strong though, I’ve only been able to do things like lift small objects and bend spoons, nothing like what you can do.”
“But, how?” Mob’s eyes are wide, watching as Minori’s nervous aura flickers around her body.
“I think… I think some of his powers remained with me. Like, I know that this power isn’t really mine. It feels so… foreign. I don’t like it.” Minori takes another deep breath as her aura slowly fades. “Like I said it’s not even close to as powerful as yours but it’s in me and…” She bites her lip, “I’m afraid of it. So, I was wondering if you could teach me how to use them.”
Mob thinks for a moment that he’s misheard her, “Use them?”
“My powers. Maybe you could teach me how to properly use them. I want to do some good with them.
“Asagiri-san…”
“You know, you can just call me Minori, I think-“
“Asagiri-san.” Mob locked eyes with her. His expression was dark and unreadable, it sent shivers down Minori’s spine. “I can’t.”
“Wh-what? Of course you can, you-“
“I can’t.” His tone changes, he almost sounds angry.
“Mob-kun, please. I need someone to teach me how to properly use these powers, I need to do some good, I need to… I need to make up for past mistakes.” Minori looks at Mob with pleading eyes, tears threatening to spill over, “I need to be better.
“Asagiri-san, I can’t make you better. It is not my job to help you change.” The warning bell rings and Mob begins to collect his things. He stands and looks down at Minori, who’s eyes are wide and tear filled. “I’m sorry.”
Minori sits alone as Mob walks away. She hugs her knees to her chest and rests her head on her knees. ‘You knew this would happen.’ She sniffles and tries to hold back more tears. Another bell rings and now she’s late for class. As she quickly and quietly gathers her things, she notices a patch of daffodils growing in the school garden. Minori feels sick to her stomach.