Chapter Text
As if it’s not enough that her mom is sick and stressed from chemotherapy and all the trips to the hospital, Tsubomi is starting to see things. It’s worse at the hospital—all those white walls mess with her eyes, and she keeps seeing darting or flickering shapes creeping along the floor. But it’s not like she can afford to get it checked out anyway. She doesn’t have the money. She withdraws into her work, taking as much overtime as she can to make sure she can pay for her mom to get better. Her boss is really decent about it and is willing to give her extra hours instead of telling her to go home and rest.
She can’t really rest while her mom is sick. All the times her mom has taken care of her, held her while she was crying, made her favorite foods when she was sick. Now she has a chance to do the same, and she’s horribly afraid she’s going to screw it up. She can’t lose her mother, the one constant in her life. She’s a real adult now, but she’s so scared of losing her mother.
Sometimes she lets her friends distract her; they go out for drinks and relax and talk about their projects or what silly things their coworkers do, and it honestly makes her feel a lot better. She should have been letting her friends support her more, she doesn’t have to do this alone.
She comes home to a completely quiet house, and when she checks in on her mom before going to sleep, she has no pulse.
She stays up until midnight making sure the coroner gets to the house and putting down insurance information and thinking about a funeral, trying desperately to hold it together because if there’s one thing she can never do it’s show weakness. By the time everything is done the digital clock in her mother’s room shows 0127. She curls up into the hollow where the bed molded around her mother’s body and cries and cries.
The rest of the week, to put it mildly, is not good. She has to call in sick to work the next day, and she knows her boss can hear the wobble in her voice, but he doesn’t say anything. She goes from place to place barely suppressing a breakdown, willing everyone she meets not to notice, and somehow they do not. Everyone is so kind, doing exactly as she asks, even that asshole Inoue who would usually never miss an opportunity to make her angry.
The worst part is that she’s now hallucinating strange glowing creatures nonstop. It has to be the stress, the sleep-deprivation. She can’t tell anyone, because that means she’s crazy now and she’s trying so hard to convince everyone that she’s fine. She can’t tell her psychotherapist because she doesn’t have one, because all her money is going into funeral arrangements.
But it takes a while to realize that something is really wrong. It’s not until she does something strange. It happens like this: her friends take her to a bar again to try to make her feel better, and she doesn’t mention that she’s never going to be able to go to a bar again without feeling like someone will die while she’s there. It’s a pretty subdued gathering, but she still has to go outside for a little bit to be alone with her grief. That’s when some drunk idiot stumbles over and starts coming onto her and won’t take a hint.
She looks him in the eyes and says, “Leave me alone.” And he crumples to the ground with his eyes still wide open.
She’s scared again. She goes back inside and tries to concentrate on the story Chie is telling. But when Rin asks for her opinion on something, Tsubomi meets her eyes, trying to figure out what to say and just wishing Rin would ignore her… and Rin actually does turn her head away like she completely forgot that Tsubomi asked anything.
Tsubomi leaves early, hoping no-one will question her. No-one does. That’s almost worse.
She starts noticing it at work, too: Inoue has been unusually nice these last few weeks. Her boss offers her a sympathy raise as soon as she starts thinking about how broke she is now. Honda never talks over her at meetings any more—she just has to give him one look, the same look that he’s always ignored.
By the end of the month she’s come to the conclusion that she is mind-controlling everyone around her. And yes, she knows it sounds crazy. She’s also hallucinating neon-colored blobs with five eyes and little bat wings. But at the same time, she used to know someone who was genuinely psychic. She’s really, really hoping it’s that, and not that she’s going crazy.
She starts looking for psychic consulting agencies, hoping that one of them will understand what’s happening to her. The first one tells her she should see a doctor. The second one doesn’t, but it’s probably because Tsubomi is very much hoping he won’t. He just tells her it’s not his area of expertise, he does curses. The next one: fortune-telling, not hallucinations or mind control. She has to look further and further away for psychics she hasn’t yet talked to, and yes, she knows that she has a tendency to obsess over things that aren’t resolved. It eats at her, though, until she finds one outside of Grain City that makes her heart leap into her throat. His name is Kageyama Ritsu—surely, surely he must be some relation of Kageyama Shigeo. If being psychic runs in families, he could be the real deal.
On the weekend she drives out to the country and parks outside a block of businesses on the main drag of a tiny little town that can’t have more than five hundred people living in it. Why would a psychic open a business here, of all places?
She passes a laundromat and walks up the stairs past the sign for a pediatrician. At the top of the stairs there’s a little plaque on the wall that says KAGEYAMA SUPERNATURAL CONSULTING. The door is open on an office where every surface is covered in blooming plants. It’s certainly not normal for a consulting agency to be full of flowers, but it’s very nice; it makes the office seem safer and more welcoming. By the window there’s a man with his back to her, watering the flowers in the window box.
She knocks gently on the doorframe, and he turns around. It’s been twenty years since she spoke to Kageyama Shigeo, or really paid him much attention at all, but without a doubt Kageyama Ritsu has the very same eyes. “Hello,” she says, “this is the psychic consulting agency?”
“It is,” says Kageyama, putting down his watering can on the desk. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” says Tsubomi. “I’ve already talked to a lot of other psychics, and they mostly seemed to think I was crazy.” She really shouldn’t lead with something like that, that will give people a negative impression of her. She needs to control herself, because her nerves do not control her.
“Ah, you’ve recently manifested psychic powers,” says Kageyama.
Tsubomi’s eyes widen. “How did you—how did you come to that conclusion?”
“Other psychics thinking you’re crazy is a pretty big clue, since most of them are fakes. But your aura is what gave it away. I haven’t met very many recently-awakened psychics, but you have all the signs: your aura is still somewhat weak and erratic because you haven’t trained it at all. Every few seconds it disappears altogether and then flares up again. Have you been seeing strange creatures everywhere? You would have thought they were hallucinations.” She nods, holding her breath. “I would guess you recently had something very stressful happen to you.”
“Yes,” she says. She hesitates. “My mother died last month.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” says Kageyama. He doesn’t look especially sorry, but his facial expressions don’t reveal much anyway. She’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, not least because he might be the only one who can help her. And because he’s telling her she’s not crazy, which is something she’s never valued so much.
“So… what should I do?”
“That depends. What kind of powers do you have?”
She bites her lip nervously, a bad habit she’d almost shaken before all this happened. She doesn’t want him to think less of her for it. “Mind control.”
“Hmm. Normally we’d call that hypnotism. You want to train it so you stop doing it without meaning to, right?”
“Yes! Will you teach me? I don’t have a very large budget…”
“I consider training new psychics to be a public service,” says Kageyama, waving her off with one hand. “If you stick around for a while you’ll meet my apprentice. He visits on Saturdays too. In the meantime, if you like, I can tell you about the basics.”
“Thank you very much, Kageyama-san. Ah, I should have introduced myself. I’m Takane Tsubomi.” Kageyama raises his eyebrows. “I think I might have known your brother,” she adds, in case that’s a look of recognition.
“Yes, he talked about you often. It’s nice to meet you,” he says, shaking her hand. Did he? Why? “If you’re going to stay for a while, would you like some tea?”
“Oh… yes, please.”
Kageyama leaves the room for a while to fill his electric kettle, so Tsubomi examines some of the plants. Even the ones that aren’t near the window look very healthy. Maybe they’re shade species.
Kageyama returns and turns on the kettle, and while he’s looking inside his desk for cups he begins: “Every kind of psychic power is linked to emotions. Normally people don’t need to control their emotions, just the physical reactions and behaviors that emotions cause. Psychics have to add psychic reactions and behaviors to that. When you have a strong feeling like ‘I want this person to leave me alone,’ suddenly they leave you alone, right?”
“Yes. The first time I was… I guess upset, and I think I knocked a man out just by looking at him.”
“From what I’ve heard, a lot of women would like to have that ability,” says Kageyama. “Still, you want to be able to choose when to use it. The first step is being able to use it intentionally, not being able to avoid using it. Why? Because it’s easier.” He puts tea bags into a pot and starts pouring the not-quite-boiling water over them. “So I’ll suppress my aura enough to be hypnotized, and I want you to try to make me say something specific.”
Does this mean other psychics can’t normally be hypnotized? She nods, and tries to think of something to have him say. Unfortunately the first thing she comes up with is the One Punch Man theme song, which she still has memorized even though she hasn’t watched it since high school. She cuts him off as soon as he starts singing, embarrassed, and he smiles. It’s the first natural expression she’s seen on his face.
“One Punch Man? You don’t seem like the type to be a fan.”
“I’m not any more! All this stuff about superpowers just made me think of it.” She shouldn’t need to feel defensive, really, she hardly knows Kageyama Ritsu and he has no right to judge her taste in media. But goofy superhero anime is not something adults are ever supposed to admit to.
“So that try was a failure because you did something you didn’t mean to. Try again.”
She’s still thinking about the One Punch Man theme, but she concentrates instead on the words ‘Yuta Chie is a good friend of mine.’ This time she catches the exact moment when Kageyama’s eyes glaze over. “Yuta Chie is a good friend of mine,” he says. Even his intonation matches what she was thinking. It’s strange hearing someone else speaking with her exact vocal pattern.
A few moments later his eyes refocus, and he smiles. “Well done, assuming that was intentional. I want you to try again, and keep trying until you can do it easily and recognize the feeling every time.”
For the next hour or so she hypnotizes Kageyama over and over. She really is starting to get a grasp on when she’s using it and when she’s not, and she’s hopeful that she won’t use it by accident any more. She is tired, though, like she’s been doing complex mathematics for the whole day, by the time Kageyama’s apprentice arrives.
“Good afternoon, Master Ritsu,” says a voice at the door.
Tsubomi releases her mental grip on him so that he can look up and say, “Good afternoon, Katsuya-kun.”
“O-oh. I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“Not at all. Takane-san is a psychic, too. I’m teaching her.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Takane-san,” says Katsuya, bowing. He’s kind of fat, and small for his age. That, and his nervous bearing, reminds her of Shigeo, although he will never match the blankness of expression of the Kageyama brothers. “I’m Serizawa Katsuya,” he says. As he walks in, a sesame shiba trots in at his heels and starts sniffing the floor.
“Takane Tsubomi. You’re Kageyama-san’s apprentice, right? What kind of powers do you have?”
“The normal kind? I-I mean, it’s the same as Master Ritsu and Master Shigeo. Telekinesis, I guess.”
“Shigeo is also your master?” asks Tsubomi, interested, as she lets the dog sniff her hand. As far as she can remember, he never used his powers at all after primary school. Looking back, she thinks she might have had something to do with it. She can’t really remember what happened, but she thinks she was kind of rude to him. He was such a weird kid. Now, she prefers weird people, but when she was younger she tried hard to seem normal, like so many middle schoolers.
“Yes! Master Shigeo saved me from—from something bad! He’s really powerful and really nice, he just doesn’t always have time to teach me since he has two jobs.”
“Katsuya-kun,” says Kageyama, “how many jobs do I have?” He’s smiling a little bit, with raised eyebrows, like he’s trying not to show that he’s amused. Tsubomi mostly keeps her eyes on him while she’s petting the dog. It seems happy to have the attention.
“Um, well, I think it might be two, or three or four, but I think Master Shigeo also doesn’t want to have me on the farm because I might hurt the plants.”
Does Shigeo really work on a farm? That is absolutely not what Tsubomi would have guessed. She doesn’t know what she would have guessed, but it wouldn’t be a farm.
“Don’t always assume it’s something negative,” says Kageyama. “He told me it’s because he wanted me to have an apprentice.”
“Oh! Thank you, Master Ritsu.” Katsuya turns back to Tsubomi, noticing what she’s doing. “Sorry, I should have introduced my dog before. This is Tsutsu-chan. Tsutsu-chan, this is Takane-san.”
“Tsutsu doesn’t speak Japanese, does it?” At this point she wouldn’t be that surprised if it turned out to be a spirit dog. She glances at Tsutsu, waiting for it to open its mouth and speak.
It doesn’t. Instead Katsuya says, “Not more than most dogs. She knows a lot of commands, though! Tsutsu-chan, will you shake my hand?” He crouches down and offers his hand to the dog, although Tsubomi has never heard a command delivered in a more diffident way. Most people do not phrase their commands as polite questions. It’s rather endearing. Tsutsu puts up one paw and places it on Katsuya’s hand. “Thank you!” says Katsuya, beaming. Oh no. He talks to the dog exactly like it’s a human. Tsubomi is not the kind of woman who starts squealing every time a child does something—normally, she doesn’t care about children at all and would rather avoid them, which she’s gotten a lot of flak for—but that is really cute.
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Tsutsu,” says Tsubomi. Tsutsu barks softly. “Katsuya-kun, can I see some of your powers?” Kageyama hasn’t shown her anything yet, and although technically she has seen telekinesis already it has been something like twenty-two years. She remembers the image of a dog floating above her head, and is briefly nervous before she assures herself that Katsuya respects Tsutsu far too much as a person to do that.
Katsuya nods, and she follows his gaze across the room to the electric kettle, which still has a few centimeters of water in it. Right now, it’s glowing faintly green, and as she watches it rises into the air, tips, and pours a little bit of water into her empty teacup. Then it sets itself back down, carefully, in its cradle.
“Good control,” says Kageyama approvingly. Katsuya beams.