Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“… this is the job we’re supposed to do?”

The slip of paper held in Shigeo Kageyama’s hands was not one that stood out as anything significant.  In fact, it appeared just the opposite: it had clearly been torn off of a piece of stationary that didn’t even belong to the Spirits & Such office - yet another one of Reigen’s economical efforts that bordered on thievery.

Still, the young esper who held it had been expecting much and more of the assignment promised upon the paper, but all that was written upon it other than the second half of a telephone number for whatever company his master had pilfered from was an address and a short description, obviously scrawled out in Reigen’s sketchy handwriting, though Serizawa’s own annotations had been added along the side.

He looked up to the annotator in question, who appeared to be sweating a little.

“Right.  Yes,” Serizawa nodded.  “This is it.”

Shigeo frowned at the paper as if it could read his expression and offer him something more, but it did not.  And while the raven-haired esper didn’t possess any sort of ability that could allow him to see through time, it wasn’t exactly hard to imagine the process by which this paper had made its way to him.  His master had probably carelessly reached for any sort of scrap paper within reach, and after making his notes, handed it off with a wave of the hand to Serizawa, who would have surely accepted it gladly, as if it were some precious artifact.  But to him...

“This doesn’t seem very important.”

Sure, it was his first “official” assignment since returning to the city, but usually his duties at work consisted of him handling all the major parts of heavy-duty exorcisms.  When measured against all of his previous experience, “herding rogue spirits” didn’t seem all that comparable.  Was Reigen testing him or something?

“Ah, no…” Serizawa began, catching wind of the thoughts that had begun to swirl around in the younger esper’s mind.  “This is just the kind of thing we’ve been doing these days.  There haven’t been many requests for psychics coming in lately.  Although the rate of reported supernatural phenomena seems to be high…”

That was certainly true, even outside of his own unconscious mishaps, Shigeo supposed.  He had seen a lot more spirits in and around the city than usual.

Though spirits were present in all the same places that humans were, they were not often of much significance or strength.  Their existences were like the invisible mites that lived on skin, or the microscopic bacterium lingering invisibly on almost every surface.  The most dangerous of that particular caliber of spirit were only about as threatening as a mosquito.

However, it wasn’t the microscopic sort that seemed to be flooding into the city as of late.  Whether newly formed as a result of the negative energy coalescing in the minds of citizens, or migratory wraiths, or for some other reason he had yet to comprehend, all sorts of spirits had been gathering.  Shigeo had seen them on his walks, and Ritsu had often complained of their ominous nature.  

“They keep watching me--” his little brother had said, twisting the blinds on the window closed.  “--as if they’re waiting for something.  Do you think they want anything?  Like… pigeons?  Some of them sort of look like pigeons,” Ritsu mused, peeking through a crack in the blinds that he had just closed.  “Have you been feeding them, Shigeo?”

“No, I haven’t.” That had been a bad habit of his when he was younger; always offering energy to little spirits in an effort to be kind and helpful.  “But I think they’re fine.  They’re just curious,” Shigeo had responded, and returned to his quiet reading.

Now, though, he was left to wonder: what could a gathering of so many spirits mean?  Sometimes, during the holidays and the New Year, human spirits would travel to gather around shrines and observe those that had been left behind, but that time of year had long since passed, and there was no significant holiday coming up to celebrate that he knew of.

He decided to voice his second question.  “…is Master Reigen going to come with us?”

Serizawa shook his head.  “Not today.  He said that he’s, erm... busy.  Working.  It’s just us today.”

“…right.  And we’re…driving?”

This certainly seemed to be the case, considering the fact that they were both standing in front of a small car, and that Serizawa was clutching the keys with sweaty palms.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Neither of them were any good at small talk.  This always became readily apparent whenever the two powerful espers were left in a room without Reigen to drive the conversation forward, and even more obvious when a client was around.  Luckily, there were no specific clients to deal with on this particular mission—by design, most likely—and so they both climbed into the car in silence.

Shigeo looked around the interior.  It reminded him a bit of his parents’ car; clean, but obviously used with regularity: the fabric seats were frayed in some places, and the plastic dashboard had lightened to a soft gray in all the places where the sun often came to rest.  An air freshener dangled from the rear-view mirror on a small length of string; closer inspection revealed that it was meant to smell like “summer linen”.  But since the car smelled more like food, Shigeo supposed it was probably mislabeled.

He was about to bring up the discrepancy when his eyes fell upon a plastic bag in the backseat.  Serizawa, noticing his gaze, spoke up.

“Ah.  My mom made us lunch to bring with us,” the man explained, reaching into the back and pushing the plastic aside to reveal two plastic bento boxes, as well as a metal thermos.  “This is her car.  She’s letting me borrow it for the day...”

Shigeo nodded.  That made more sense than his own supposition.  It also explained why the car they were situated in lacked the distinctive rental-car-smell he recalled from the Telepathy Club’s trip to Mud Boat Mountain. 

A third question occurred to him.  “Serizawa-san, do you have a driver’s license?”

“I do.  I only took the final test recently, though, so I’m still a bit nervous,” the elder esper admitted, releasing a slow breath.  “But it’s alright.  I don’t want to let anxiety stop me from progressing.  Not anymore.”

A smile formed across Shigeo’s lips, and he nodded.

“Me too.”

⸻

Traffic made their progress slow, and Shigeo increasingly impatient.  He was excited to return to his routine, to prove himself, to help his master— all of these things and more contributed to his growing restlessness, which expressed itself in the manner of his leg bouncing rapidly in place.  He made up for it with small questions about the goings-on of Spirits and Such during the time when he was in his coma, which helped keep his mind off of the time they were losing stuck in the car.  However, all of the answers Serizawa offered him were boring, so it wasn’t long before he changed to a different topic.

“Was it hard to get your license?”

At this, Serizawa nodded.  At the beginning of the drive, his hands had been locked to the steering wheel in a vice-like grip, his hands going pale with the effort, but after a while the esper had settled into a more comfortable (albeit still vigilant) position.  He was a careful driver, and courteous to others on the road— very different from Reigen.

“If you mean in terms of the paperwork, then, well, yes... but the tests themselves weren’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.  As I recall, Reigen had said something along those lines beforehand... that people tend to worry about something more before it happens than during, or after.  He was right, I suppose.”  Serizawa smiled.  “As usual.  Now that I have my license, and a place of employment, I’m looking to move out into my own place.  I’ve been living with my mom since forever... I figured it’s about time I got out of her hair.”

Shigeo blinked.  “That’s nice.”  He looked again at the paper they had been given for the job.  His fidgeting hands had worn it into a soft and fragile state, but the writing was still clear enough to read.  Serizawa’s notes added information about the area that had probably been searched up on the internet; reports of paranormal activity, angry comments on message boards...

“When do you think we’ll get there?”

He had asked this particular question several times already, but Serizawa obliged him.

“GPS says seven minutes.”

“And then we just walk around?”

“Pretty much.”

Shigeo slid backwards in the seat and sighed.  This was much less exciting than he had hoped it might be.  Not that he had hoped for anything excessively serious — the calmer, the better, but he couldn’t help but feel that Master Reigen was just sending them away for the sake of it.  And if that was the case, Shigeo would have preferred they just stay home.

“We’re not doing this for no reason,” Serizawa spoke up, glancing over at the esper in the passenger’s seat.  To be honest, he was a little surprised by Shigeo’s display of expression; he knew vaguely of the events that had taken place after his departure during the day of the confession, having been filled in secondhand by Reigen, but still... the boy was so different.

And yet he was completely the same.

Shigeo turned his eyes towards him questioningly, and Serizawa realized that he had gone silent within his contemplation.  “Oh,” the older esper started, and shook his head to clear it of his thoughts.  “What I mean is that, lately, people have been blaming supernatural activity caused by evil spirits on espers.  Master Reigen thinks that if it gets cleaned up, people will start wanting to hire us for actual jobs again.”

“...this isn’t an actual job?”

An uncomfortable static seemed to fill the car alongside the question, and the older esper hesitated.  “Well... I mean, in terms of getting paid, not- not really, but, ah..."

Serizawa tried not to meet the boy’s gaze.  He kept his hands on the wheel, and tried equally hard not to think too much about the irregularly flickering taillights on the car in front of him, or what kind of things could happen if a car stopped short in the middle of the road in traffic.

“...it’s a real job in that what we’re doing matters,” he managed to say through a throat filled with uncertainty.  “We’re helping ease people’s minds about... about everything that’s going on.”

The oppressive feeling lifted; Shigeo nodded.  “I’m glad,” he smiled, looking relieved, and as traffic smoothed away and the car drew near the neighborhood they were headed towards, Serizawa couldn’t help but feel the same.

⸻⸻

“So... you’re saying that an esper came into your shop and, erm... made all of your refrigerators stop working?”

“Yes!  Exactly,” the store owner nodded enthusiastically, her arms crossed over the front of a blue apron.  “The generator I use here keeps flicking on and off all the time.  Now it’s finally gone kaput!  So I asked my son to check it out, and he said that he didn’t need to, since he had seen all kinds of reports of that thing happening on the Internet.  He printed it out and everything, see?”

They had come into the store after following a lead from a pedestrian, who had gotten their information from a poster stuck on a streetlight, and after calling that number they had reached a group dedicated to ‘raising paranormal awareness’, and so on, the two espers always following information that all seemed to be equally dubious in nature.  But at least this seemed to be something.  Spirits haunting electrical appliances was actually relatively common behavior, especially for minor poltergeists.

Serizawa took the paper and glanced over it.  “Ma’am, this is from a website specifically dedicated to appliance maintenance.  It’s not going to accurately represent your problem.  You should call a certified technician and-”

The shopkeeper scowled.  “You think I have the money for that?  Pah!  You’re the ones who came in here and asked me if I had seen anything weird.  Well, I’ll tell you what’s weird!  People walking around with magic powers and gunking up my business!”

The two espers shared an uncomfortable glance.

It was the elder of the two who finally spoke, offering the woman a customer-service smile to appease her irritation.  “We’ll check it out, ma'am.”

With this, the woman nodded, apparently satisfied.  “Good.  At least you investigators are worth something!  Last guy who came in, he said I was runnin’ too many fridges!  Overloaded the breaker!  I’ll tell you what, some people just don’t know what they’re talking about...”

“...right.”

For what it was worth, they gave the store a passable onceover, checking for spirits and clues— but while there were spirits present, none of them presented the kind of power necessary to cause the kind of phenomenon the storekeeper was reporting.  The matter was unresolved; at least, until they had left.

“The person he was talking about was right,” Shigeo piped up after they had walked a distance away from the place, casting a short glance back over his shoulder towards the small general store.  “She’s running too many appliances.  The electricity is there: the store is just using more than it can handle.”

The source of the problem had been obvious to him from the moment they had even entered the store— his second sight, which seemed most often willing to show him the invisible currents of power running through the city, had immediately picked up on the extension cord  tucked away behind the many fridges dedicated to the store’s offerings of food and drink.  Using the extension cord, they had all been plugged into one outlet.  It was just too much to ask from the building.

But the woman hadn’t listened to his suggestion that the power load might have been too great, of course, and Shigeo had no way to insist without revealing something that he had no reasonable way to have known about.  It was frustrating, and for a moment he had been so annoyed by the storekeeper’s willful ignorance that for a brief moment, all the fridges had come whirring to life under the spark of his anger.

They had left quickly after that, before the woman had time to put two and two together and realize that they had not actually fixed the problem for her.  And now, with no more leads to go on, they simply walked aimlessly through the streets of the Cayenne Pepper District and shooing off any rogue spirits they came across.

The effort was mostly successful, with a few notable discrepancies— namely, the spirits that had elected to trail along behind them.  These were the truly harmless kind, and so Shigeo was willing to let them be.

At least, up to a certain point.  The threshold of his patience, however, was starting to wear thin by the time they had been walking for about forty minutes, and at least a few hundred minor spirits had joined up in stride.  Several seemed to behave like small dogs; cute, of course, taking the form of small clouds that appeared to change shape on a whim according to whatever they were feeling, but they also all appeared to be demanding his attention, and would get into small fights with one another if any one of them seemed to hold his focus for more than a moment.

“You seem to be quite popular today,” Serizawa observed.  He had to hold in his laughter from the ridiculous nature of the display since Shigeo appeared to be quite fed up with the spirits, but traces of amusement still carried through his voice and caused the boy to scowl.

“I don’t know what they want.  None of them know how to communicate with me,” he sighed, and allowed one to leap into his arms.  He held it up to eye level and scrutinized the creature, attempting to make communication through his power, but the cloud simply wiggled out of his grasp and settled atop his head.

This time, Serizawa found it impossible not to chuckle.  “It’s not your fault.  I think they’re attracted to your aura.”

Shigeo blinked.  “My aura?  Oh.  I guess that makes sense,” he admitted, feeling slightly foolish for not thinking of that earlier.  “But why me?  You’re plenty powerful too, Serizawa.  How come they aren’t bothering you so much?”

“I’m better at controlling my output,” the older esper explained, raising his hands and flexing them to demonstrate the point.  Shigeo observed the flex of pixelated pink-purple.  It washed over him like a pleasant, albeit static-y breeze, and then retreated.  The few spirits who had been alerted to the power and began wandering around settled as it ebbed away, and once again trailed after the raven-haired esper.  “You’ll get better at it over time.”

They walked for a while longer, passing stores with boarded windows and neon open signs, houses with drawn curtains and children playing in yards under the watchful supervision of their guardians, people who would walk by in groups of two or three but never alone; the city was alive again, but it was a tenuous and paradoxical sort of life, a string pulled taught that could break with a brush of the hand.

Shigeo observed none of these things; instead, he focused on the newly emerged flowers, the clouds, the spirits walking next to him, sparing no glances or worry towards the things he wished not to think too much about.

Life, however, seemed to be at odds with his desires, as it so often was, and it wasn’t long before Serizawa struck up a new line of conversation. 

“So... how have you been?  You’ve... been through a lot lately, right?”

Shigeo paused and glanced over towards the older esper; it wasn’t exactly unlike him to begin a conversation these days, since Serizawa had made great strides of progress when it came to the social standard, but something about the question felt abrupt, even clumsy.

“I’ve been good,” he answered anyway, and tilted his head in the direction of a building that had caught his eye.

“Ah, right... is that so?”

“Mhm.”

“You know... it would be alright if you weren’t,” Serizawa tried, reaching up and massaging the back of his neck in an attempt to soothe some of his awkwardness- like waves against stone.  “It would be okay if you were struggling with... with everything that’s going on.”

This time, the older esper was only offered silence for a response, and the uncomfortable sensation of static from before returned.

Serizawa Katsuya had only ever been to the beach once in his life, but he recalled the rhythm of the water washing up on shore and then retreating.  The way that the cliff faces, so solid and imposing, would all eventually be smoothed away by the tides of time.  Whenever he felt particularly nervous, or afraid, he would think of the waves.

When facing Shigeo, however, the thought of the sea did little to calm him.  What usually brought forth the image of shore and sunset would instead warp into the picture of something black and bottomless.  And that image was reflected in the young esper’s eyes; so dark they seemed sometimes completely absent of light.

And yet, while his anxiety regarding that dark power was not unfounded, Serizawa knew that it, like all of his fears, were often unreasonable.  It wasn’t right to judge anyone, let alone Shigeo, the boy who had saved him from his own self-destructive cycle, by the worst of their moments.  When it came down to it, Shigeo was someone that Serizawa could confidently say that he knew was a kind and gentle person; after all, this fact had been demonstrated over and over again.

Even so, Serizawa found himself worrying.  There was just no denying that there was something different about Shigeo— especially now.  It was something that only an esper could understand, and something that Reigen remained completely oblivious to, despite Serizawa’s best attempts at explaining why any of his attempts at coaching Shigeo on psychic power would likely fail.  Still, he had decided to take this job with the boy, because while his powers were certainly strange and sometimes even unsettling, Serizawa knew better than anyone just how much an open hand could mean to someone who appeared dangerous to those who refused to see them as anything else.  He had, after all, been one of those people for a very, very long time.

Shigeo, however, only offered a small shrug in response to his words, his expression serene.  “I’m doing fine.  Hanazawa-kun and I talked a little bit the other day, and I decided not to worry about it so much.”

“Oh.”  Serizawa glanced down.  “That’s... good, then.”

Truthfully, he had been expecting Shigeo to be withdrawn and sullen, since that was what Reigen had expressed concern to him about, but it seemed just the opposite now.  The boy seemed aflame with energy, and everywhere they went, he observed with bright eyes.  He was almost skipping when they walked, and smiling to himself all the while.  His aura, alight with positive emotion, painted a striking contrast against the dull background of the city still scarred by the actions of the very same boy who currently walked its streets in stride.

And while Serizawa supposed that it was a good thing that the boy appeared to be doing well, the picture of his elation seemed somewhat concerning.  The older esper couldn’t help but notice the way certain electronics would flash or fizzle out whenever Shigeo grew more excited as a result of noting some funny-looking bird or mentioning the training he and his friend had gotten up to, or by talking about whatever he was looking forward to next: going to the aquarium with Ritsu, talking to his friend Tome Kurata on the phone over the weekend... it was good to be happy, but this...

He was about to speak up again when Shigeo’s head turned away from him and towards a building about a block further down.  

“There,” the dark-haired esper pointed, his eyes suddenly alight with excitement.  “There’s something over there.  Come on!”

And then he was off, and Serizawa was left standing on the street corner of a silent, suspicious neighborhood inside of a silent, suspicious city, watching the young esper with dark hair and darker eyes bound off towards to wherever the wind was calling him with an open heart and open mind, and he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, it would be alright to let him be.

Chapter Text

Shigeo had been certain that something had been present only moments ago in the dark and dreadfully lit utility room located beneath the building he had rushed towards, following staircase after staircase into the basement that he stood in now.  It was an abandoned building, that much he was sure of, given that there had been signs plastered on the doors about structural integrity and relocation efforts, but for there was still electricity flowing through the walls.  Evidently, no one had bothered to shut off the power, or even lock any of the doors.  And there had been that trace of... something.

But there was nothing in the basement other than the concrete walls lined with inactive utility pipes and the other sort of inert features to be expected in a place such as this.  No traces of a single stray spirit that might have passed onto the “other side” and left behind a characteristic flash of energy that could have explained what had caught his attention, and definitely no currently present spirit either.

He frowned.

The sharp clicks of Serizawa’s polished loafers sounded on the concrete floor behind him as the older esper and newer employee of Spirits & Such entered the room.  His typically crisp navy suit, gifted by the owner of the aforementioned workplace, was in disarray, and the man’s chest rose and fell heavily.  It had been necessary to sprint in order to keep up with the excited esper ahead of him, and only now could he stop to catch his breath and look around the room for whatever it had been that had caught Shigeo’s attention.

“You…” he huffed, “…sensed something?”  Serizawa glanced around the room for a moment before, like Shigeo only seconds earlier, finding nothing.

“There was something here,” Shigeo insisted.  “But now it’s not.”  Even the spirits from outside had not followed in after them, which came as a bit of surprise, since they had been so insistent before.

“Oh,” Serizawa blinked, looking confused.  “Then...”

“Hold on,” the young esper paused, holding up a hand and allowing his eyes to close.  Against the dimly lit room, the act hardly made a difference, but it helped him concentrate.  Using his power to ‘see’ was not so much like utilizing an entirely different sense as much as it was paying attention to something that typically flew under the radar.  “I think I can try something.  See where it went.”

He knelt, and pressed his palms to the ground: things would go along much faster if they didn’t have to search for the center of spiritual activity manually.  And separating out spiritual energy from the physical kind was relatively simple, once you knew what you were looking for.  All he had to do was find whatever trace the thing he had detected had left behind, and then pull…

“Wait.”

Shigeo looked up, startled; his second sight fell away.  For a moment, he felt irritation at being interrupted, but once he glimpsed Serizawa’s gently concerned expression it quickly faded.  “What is it?”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

This gave him pause, as the answer was, well, no— he had been following a hunch.  But was that a bad thing?  His hunches were usually right.  “Erm… should I?”

Serizawa nodded.

“Oh.”  Shigeo considered it.  “Then... not really.  I was just thinking that if there was some sort of trace, I could pull it back here, and then we could take care of it,” he explained, gesturing around the room.  “If I felt it, then there has to be something here.”

“Not necessarily,” Serizawa advised him, placing a hand upon the boy’s shoulder before helping him to his feet.  “For example, what if that trace was not a spirit, but rather an esper?  Trying to pull them back through space would pull them through physical space, and then we’d have an esper-sized hole in the wall.”

It wasn’t meant to be a joke, but Shigeo almost laughed— and then abruptly fell silent as the real implications of that sort of action fell upon him.

I could’ve...  A familiar shame threatened to rise up within him, but Shigeo pushed it firmly away, towards the place within him where he was starting to put all of the things that upset him.  He reassured himself that the act was very different from before — he wasn’t repressing, simply... looking on the more positive side of things.  There was no need to think about the fact that he could have very nearly hurt or killed someone just now, or that he had probably done the same in other circumstances, or to think about what Rei Kurosaki had said.  All those things were problems of the past, and Shigeo was determined to focus exclusively on the future.

However, despite this fact, and the fact that absolutely nothing was amiss now, Serizawa was still looking at him with that same concerned expression.

“It’s alright,” the older esper told him, the hand that remained upon his shoulder offering a reassuring squeeze.  “It’s just... this is why it’s important to be careful with your powers, Shigeo.  Your abilities...”

Are different.  Shigeo could remember with an ugly vividness the contents of the conversation he had overheard between Serizawa and his master; the pleading tone in Master Reigen’s voice, and the reluctant, nervous one of the senior esper.

He had been so upset, overhearing that.  Knowing that there was nothing he could do, either.  Nothing anyone could do, because he was different.

Serizawa tried again.  “Your powers—”

“I know.” Shigeo did not allow the man to finish the statement, instead shrugging him off and striding briskly back towards the stairs.  He did not want to hear about whatever Serizawa was going to try and explain to him, or to endure a lengthy explanation about a responsibility that he was already painfully aware of.  “Let’s just go.”

⸻⸻

The walk back to the car was one on the awkward side, but it was difficult for that tense mood to persevere after Serizawa began unpacking the two lunches his mother had prepared for them both.

“Ah... it looks so good.”  Shigeo took the small plastic container in his hands with an awed sort of expression, looking over the carefully prepared food inside.  It was similar to the lunches his mom used to pack him and Ritsu for school when they were younger; the onigiri even had cute faces made with precisely placed seaweed stickers.

Serizawa nodded and rubbed at the back of his neck with an awkward smile.  “My mom is the type of person to do things like this for me all the time.  I don’t think she’s quite realized that I’ve grown up now... but I suppose I can’t blame her for that.”

“My mom is kind of like that too.”  Shigeo said, nostalgia filling up his heart.  “She doesn’t make lunches for me or Ritsu anymore, but she always reminds us about things like wearing a scarf or leaving on time.  Even though I’m the only one who ever needs the reminder.”

Serizawa’s laugh was deep and gentle.  “I see,” he said, brown eyes twinkling.  “By the way, how is your brother these days?  I believe the last time I really talked with him was... well, it must have been all the way back at the Ibogami Hot Springs, now that I think about it…”

“He’s doing well.  Already finished his summer homework, so now he’s working on high school prep... even though he’s only going into his second year.  He’s very smart, so I’m not surprised.”  Shigeo smiled.  “Back when we were in elementary school, he wanted to skip a grade so we could be in the same class, but Mom wouldn’t let him.  She told him it was important not to rely on me so much.  I guess the tables turned on us, though… now I’m the one that’s always looking for help.”  He took another bite of the lunch.  They had elected to eat in a park, and the sounds of laughing children and creaking swing sets carried through the air, whisking their thoughts away to places of nostalgia.

There was something that he couldn’t seem to get off his mind, however.

“Serizawa-san...”

The man glanced at him.  “Yes?”

Shigeo opened his mouth, and then suddenly hesitated.  He had conflicting feelings about talking to Serizawa about the strange things that were happening to him more and more frequently.  Because while he knew that there were many similarities between them, and it was because of that reason that Shigeo was often able to confide in the older esper about some things that could simply not be shared with Ritsu, or Reigen, or anyone else—his occasional lingering nightmares about crows, for one.

But even so, the same cold emotion that had enveloped him on the day he had overheard that horrible conversation, the one he was most certainly not supposed to hear... it weighed on him, and leadened his tongue.

They were similar, yes… but they were also different.

Or maybe it was that Serizawa was not different, and it was only him.

It was not uncommon for Shigeo to feel a distance between himself and the people that surrounded him, and in many ways this was a normal thing.  It was what Master Reigen spoke of so often: the nature of individuality in humans, and the importance of communication between them.

Sometimes, though, Shigeo did not even really feel human.  He had always stood between two worlds: that of the dead, and that of the living, with him in some position of abeyance, waiting for one side or the other to come and officially claim him.  But neither had.

Perhaps that was why that continued to linger in his thoughts.

“...never mind.”

“—never mind what?”

The voice had come out of nowhere, or so it had seemed at first, before the photons that had previously been obscuring Shou Suzuki’s presence were dismissed, and the figure of the young redheaded esper appeared from within folds of light and shadow.

Serizawa jumped at the sudden appearance of the esper and almost dropped his lunch, but a quick move from Shou caught it mid-air, hovering with the invisible rippling of his red aura.

“What?  Surprised to see me?"

Shigeo, who was not surprised to see Shou, shook his head in the negative. He had been picking up on the loose manifestations of the esper’s aura ever since they had began to eat, for despite attempting to conceal his presence from both of them, it appeared that Shou Suzuki was not infallible to the temptations of a homecooked meal, and had been levitating several bites of food away whenever Shigeo or Serizawa looked away from their lunches during their conversation.

Serizawa, who was still recovering from his surprise, pounded his chest with a fist in order to dislodge the grains of rice that had gotten stuck there in his initial jump.   “Ah… Shou.  You’ve really gotten better at using the refraction point...”

“Yep,” Shou nodded proudly, “Ritsu helped me refine my technique.  I told you we work well together,” he grinned, and plopped down in the space between the two espers on the park bench.

There had not been much space to begin with, and as Shigeo scooted a bit off to the right, he regarded Shou with a curious look.  “You’ve been training together often?”

The redhead grinned.  “Yeah, we have.  And, like I said, we work great together.  If Claw was still around, I’d probably still be pestering him to join.”

“Right,” Serizawa hummed.  “I remember you talking about him after you two first met.  As I recall, you said that—”

Shou’s face and aura flared an extreme shade of red, and the boy threw up his hands as if he were very briefly contemplating the idea of sending Serizawa flying.  “—hey, that’s in the past, okay?  I was just excited to meet someone who was similar to me,” he said quickly.  “It’s not like there were a lot of kids my age to hang out with.  It’s not so easy to make friends when your father is the leader of a terrorist organization.”

There was a short and awkward silence.

“...right.”  Shigeo pressed his lips together in a thin line, hoping to prevent any obvious frown from forming upon his face.  “That’s fine and all, but why are you here?”

Shou regarded him first with narrowed eyes, and then a bright smile that washed away any of the traces of ire that might have existed in the previous expression.  “What, I can’t come on down to hang out with an old friend?  Are you guys doing important stuff or something?”

“Sort of, yes...” Shigeo paused.  “Wait, old friend?”

Serizawa chuckled.  “Ah, well, Shou-kun and I have known one another for a long time.  Back when I was working with his father as a part of Claw’s ‘Ultimate Five’, of course.  When he was young, Shou was always so eager to learn about the inner workings of the organization... I suppose I should’ve seen his rebellion coming sooner."

“Yeah, but you were kind of a rockhead back then,” Shou shrugged.  “I’m pretty sure I straight up told you I was going to do it at one point, but you didn’t take me seriously.  It’s whatever.”

Serizawa frowned.  “I’m sorry about that, you know,” he apologized.  “I should have done more for you back then.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Like I said, it’s whatever.  So; what are you guys doing in this part of town?  It’s kind of far from where you work, right?”

Shigeo observed the redhead.  Despite claiming that it was “whatever”, there had been a brief expression on Shou’s face that indicated whatever had gone on between him and Serizawa was not quite whatever , but he did not press the issue.  He was already having enough trouble with his own emotional revelations.  Adding another into the mix was asking for trouble.  And besides, he would feel incredibly awkward as a bystander in the middle of whatever unresolved emotional conflict stood between these two.

“We’re working here right now,” Shigeo said, snapping the bento box on his lap closed before handing it back to Serizawa.  “And we were just getting back to it.  So we should go now.”

It wasn’t that Shigeo didn’t like Shou.  He was, in fact, relatively neutral about the redhead, but he had been harboring a suspicion for a while now that Shou didn’t exactly like him.  Normally, he would never be clued into the kind of subtle social observation required to make that conclusion, but it was still a strong feeling.  It was in the way the redhead held himself, his aura, around Shigeo.

It kind of hurt his feelings, actually.

Well... if he doesn’t like me, I don’t have to like him, Shigeo decided, and felt a little better.

“That’s right,” Serizawa nodded.  “Shou, why don’t you come with us?”

Shigeo, who had been about to walk off in expectance that Serizawa would follow, suddenly stopped.  “—what?”

His question had been sharp and sudden, and caused both Shou and Serizawa to look at him: the former with amusement, and the latter with confusion.

“Er... I was asking Shou if he wanted to come along,” the older esper explained, glancing between the two boys.  “I figured since we weren’t having any luck with our investigation, the extra help could be useful...”

“Right.  I can totally help,” Shou agreed.  “I’ve heard some stuff about things happening around here.  Unless...” the redhead cocked his head sideways at Shigeo and arched one red eyebrow.  “...that’s a problem for you?”

Shigeo blanched.  “No— not at all.  It’s not a problem.  You can come.  That’s fine.”  He hadn’t meant to be rude to Shou, at least in the retrospective.  There had just been a flare of anger in his chest, and it had come loose before he even had a chance to realize it.

Shou is Ritsu’s friend.  I don’t have any reason to be angry with him , Shigeo reminded himself.  And if we all work together, we’ll be able to help more people.

Right.  All those things were true, so there was no reason to be upset.  

“It’s not a problem at all,” he smiled, and spent no effort to wonder as to why he felt he was lying.

⸻⸻⸻

“So... how is your father?”

After explaining the extent of their information on the case (which was admittedly not much) to Shou, the redhead had nodded and revealed his own information in kind.  Some of it overlapped with theirs, but there were a few new leads, and it was in search of these that the group of three espers were currently following.  Like before, however, most of the actual investigation was spent talking to various passersby as they tried to simultaneously expand and narrow down their information, which meant that the majority of their time was spent walking from one place to another.  Normally, Shigeo would have preferred these times revert into comfortable periods of silence, but with Shou Suzuki alongside them, this appeared to be impossible.

So Shigeo had allowed himself to fall back behind the other two, who seemed to get along just fine without him, and only half-listened to the contents of their conversation.  When the subject came upon Toichiro Suzuki and the other remnants of Claw, however, he felt his ears perk up to attention.

Shou looked a little surprised at the question Serizawa had just asked him, but shrugged after a moment.  “He’s fine.  I get to visit him around once a month, and every time he’s got nothing interesting to tell me, so I mostly just keep him updated on what’s going on here.”

Serizawa nodded.  “I see... he hasn’t said anything about me?”

“Nope.”  Shou eyed the older esper.  “Oh, were you expecting something?”

“No, no,” Serizawa chuckled.  “I was just wondering.”

Shou nodded.  “As far as I know, everybody who stuck around in the area after the dissolution of Claw is doing okay too.  Minegishi’s working at a flower shop now, which is pretty fitting.  Hatori found himself a government job, and I’m pretty sure Shibata is trying to become an actor now.  Apparently, since he’s so sincere about saying he was in the Ultimate Five, people think he’s good at acting.”

“Well... he always was quite the character,” Serizawa chuckled, eliciting a laugh from Shou.  “And how is Ryo?”

“Hm?  Oh, Shimazaki-san.  I don’t know what happened to him.  He disappeared during the fight, didn’t he?”

“Yes... but I thought maybe you’d heard something.  It would be nice to know if he’s doing alright,” Serizawa frowned.

“Forget about that guy.  He was an asshole anyway,” Shou grimaced.  “Always obsessed with demonstrating his superiority… honestly, as far as I’m concerned, I’m fine if I never see him again.  You should feel the same way, Serizawa.  Some people aren’t worth thinking about.”

The older esper hummed thoughtfully.  “I suppose you have a point.”

Shigeo nodded, despite the fact that both of the other two were walking a fair stretch ahead of him and couldn’t see the motion.  His eyes were following the cracks that ran up and down the sidewalks, where grass or trailing ants occasionally emerged.  For most people, it was easy to forget about the microscopic life that lived beneath one’s feet.  And that life felt the same about the macroscopic; aside from a few interactions here and there— a human disturbing an anthill, a spider in the bathroom—each world moved without regard to the other.

I wonder where I fit in.

He had always harbored a fascination with the natural world.  Most of the people who knew him were aware of this fact, and whenever a birthday or gift-giving holiday came around, he tended to receive presents that were themed accordingly.  He still owned his frog umbrella, even though it was too small for practical use now that he was no longer a small child after which the device had been designed.

He turned his eyes up to the clouds.  They were white and fluffy, mountainous in their breadth, and despite looking like they would be soft, Shigeo had learned this not to be the case after a recent flying mishap left him soaked and nearly frozen.

When the esper looked back down, however, there was a cloud on the ground in front of him.  At first, this was a very confusing sight; after all, clouds were usually in the sky, not scuttling across the sidewalk, but closer inspection made him realize that it was simply another one of the little spirits from before.

“Oh.  Hello,” Shigeo greeted the spirit, and knelt down on the sidewalk next to it.  “Where did the rest of your friends go?”  The spirit was alone on the street, a rather odd thing considering how many there had been before, and this one seemed...

It’s hurt, he realized.   The vibrant, sunset-like shimmering color he remembered the spirits having earlier was far less richly saturated now, and there were notable patches of discoloration in the creature’s coat.  “Ah... what happened?”

It did not answer.  Rather, the spirit leapt onto his head and glowed a dark blue.

Serizawa glanced back in his direction.  They had walked a fair distance away from him by that point, neither realizing that the dark-haired esper had fallen behind.  “Shigeo, are you alright?”

He nodded, and moved to stand.  “Yes,” he called back.  “It’s just that I think this spirit got separated from its group.  It’s asking me for help.  It’s saying that—”

“Oh, shit!  Move!”  Shou shouted, and as Shigeo gave him a confused look, he felt himself suddenly pushed backwards by the force of Serizawa’s aura.

His falling was something that felt as if it had happened in a video that he was watching after the fact; the moment Shigeo sensed the force of a second, unseen spirit barreling towards him, his power had reacted and thrown up his second sight in place of a barrier.  Within it, he could view the entire scene as if he were a third party observer: Serizawa and Shou on the other end of the block, the spirit, a female bystander, and something beneath them all.

It was that ‘something’ that had really caught his attention and caused him to react to the appearance of the second spirit so slowly.  It had come out from the ground, from that something , slithering out of a drainage grate on the road behind him.  It was an array of several different eye bleeding colors; neon yellow, toxic green, fluorescent pink, all of them bleeding together and constantly shifting like an otherworldly chameleon trying to blend in with an alien landscape.  It had flashed a bright red upon seeing him, and only half a second later, lunged.

It was only by the grace of Serizawa’s quick reaction that the thing, entirely serpent-like in its form but for the strangely human eyes it possessed, did not collide with Shigeo head-on.  Instead, as the esper fell backwards, he watched it fly past him, striking out at empty air and hissing with frustration after missing.

He did not collide with the ground; the slowed sensation of time gave him the ability to catch himself with his powers instead, and, with one arm, pull the cloudy spirit that had been trying to warn him close to his chest as he inched backwards across the concrete.

I see.  That’s what it was trying to say... the injury must have come from this spirit, then.  That’s why it was asking for help.

He lifted the fluffy spirit up to eye level.  “Okay.  I understand.  What should I do?”

The spirit answered him this time, though in a series of clicking noises that sounded nothing like any human speech.

help

“...help what?”

“Help us, you idiot!”  Shou called out, and ducked under a second charge from the snake-spirit.  “It’s slippery, I can’t grab it!”  The redhead clenched a fist and gathered power around it, forming a rippling sphere of psychic energy for a preemptive strike in anticipation that the snake would charge at him again.

The spirit, however, did not do so: though it seemed as if it were preparing to, the thing suddenly changed direction after seeing the wall of red energy it would meet if it did so.  Instead, the snake spirit flew upwards, where it surveyed them both with that upsettingly human gaze once more.  There was something in that gaze, Shigeo thought.  More than just a human look.  Evil spirits were often manifestations of negative human emotion, wandering leftovers from a vessel that had since passed into the ether, but this one...

“Shit... it’s intelligent.  Help me close it in, Ritsu’s bro,” Shou yelled to him, but the dark-haired esper had suddenly frozen, a look of shocked confusion on his face as he regarded the fluffy spirit in front of him as it spoke into his mind once more.

help!

“Help... you?  No... it?  But it just tried to attack us,” he murmured, gazing up at the second spirit in the sky before looking back down towards the one in his arms.  “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”  He could see Serizawa standing in the middle of the road, a psychically-imbued business card held between two long fingers, could see the man drawing it back to strike...

“Are you talking to that thing?”  Shou looked more surprised than angry, as he had been when he thought that the raven-haired esper was simply spacing out of the conflict completely.  Now he simply stood with a dumbfounded expression.  “Seriously... this isn’t the time for that!”

Shigeo’s frown deepened.  “Hold on.  It’s trying to tell me something.”

help us!

He looked up again, past Shou’s confused and frustrated expression back towards Serizawa, who had managed to throw up a barrier around the fast-moving spirit.  Now, barrier and spirit hung together in the air like bird and birdcage, a glass Christmas ornament and the decoration inside.  He could see it closing in, feel the rush of energy swirl and gather within the increasingly confined space, electrifying the spirit within and causing it to scream.

The one in his arms screamed, too, a high and piercing sound that made him wince and raise his hands to cover his ears with a groan.  It was shouting into his mind, still pleading, begging for help, asking him to save them both—

—and then it was gone.  The one in the sky was gone, too.  Small sparks of purple static rained from the place in the air where Serizawa’s barrier had disappeared out of reality with a pop!, and as Shigeo lowered his hands from his head, he could feel small shocks where they landed upon his skin.

“Ah...”

His soft cry was drowned out of the air by the sound of a startled shriek, and Shigeo, Shou, and Serizawa all looked over to the other side of the street.  A woman none of them had noticed in the middle of the action stood there, half-leaning against a concrete wall, one hand covering her open mouth.

Shou grimaced.  “Oh, great.  We should probably get out of here.”

Shigeo, who was still recovering from the leftover shocks of electricity and the ringing echo of the spirits telepathic screaming, looked up at the redheaded esper with a weary expression.  “...what are you talking about?”

Shou stared at him for a long moment, and then burst out laughing.  “Oh, man… you really are totally oblivious.”  He sighed, and stuck his hands back into his jacket.  “What I mean is that we just performed an exorcism, and that woman saw the whole thing.  She’s probably going to call the cops on us.”

...what?

“Shigeo, could you come over here for a moment?”

Serizawa was calling for him from the other side of the road.  He was standing next to the woman, notepad in hand, and beckoning him over.

Shigeo went, because he didn’t want to linger near the site of the exorcism, and didn’t want to hear anything more about whatever he thought Shou was saying.  It didn’t make sense, anyway.

(It did, but it was something he was choosing to ignore.)

The woman looked pale, and just about ready to faint, so when she swayed, Shigeo reached out to steady her with his power and lowered the woman slowly down to the ground.  At first, she flinched and looked around fearfully, but then saw him and relaxed slightly.

“You’re psychics,” the woman breathed, staring up at them with wide eyes.

“Uh... yes.”  Shigeo frowned.  That was obvious.  Had she hit her head?

“We are,” Serizawa nodded, and reached out a hand to help the woman up.  “Are you alright?  Were you hurt at all?”

The woman took his hand and stood, brushing off her skirts with a dazed expression.  “No... I’m alright, thanks to you.”  She straightened.  “My... my name is Masako Kurihara.  I work in that cafe over there... I wasn’t expecting to meet a psychic today.  I thought you...” she frowned, and shook her head, sending pale brown curls bouncing.  “...never mind.  Thank you.”  She offered them a low bow, and then fidgeted nervously.  “You took care of it, right?  Strange things have been happening around here rather often as of late... people said it was psychic... but, ah, do you think that’ll stop now?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Serizawa admitted.  “But we’re here to do everything we can to help.”  He had produced the small pocketbook he always kept on hand by that point, and when Shigeo raised himself up on his toes to glimpse it, he could read the paragraph’s worth of tiny, neat handwriting already scratched out on its surface.  “You said that you’ve noticed the phenomena?  When did it begin to appear?”

“Yes.  Well... things started becoming stranger around maybe a month and a half ago,” the woman recalled, lifting a hand to her chin and drawing her eyebrows together.  “But things have only really become more serious in the past few weeks.  At first it was just small things, like the power going out, but lately people have found things missing from their houses, or even their purses.  A few people have claimed to have been attacked by evil spirits early in the morning, too...” she sniffed.  “I… I can’t tell you anything else.  I’m sorry.  I’m just so tired of things like this happening here.  Please... please take care of it.”

Serizawa tucked the pocketbook back into his navy jacket before producing a package of tissues from the same place and offering it to the woman with a kind smile.  “We will,” he reassured.  “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that this problem goes away.  And if there’s anything after that, you can always give us a call.”

The woman took both the package of tissues and the business card that were offered to her with a relieved expression.  “Thank you.  I tried to speak to other psychics before you, but they...” she hesitated.  “...well, none of them were willing to help me.”

Shigeo felt surprised by that.  Didn’t Banshoumaru Shinra work nearby?  Of course, there was always the chance that the spirit was simply too powerful for him... but if that was the case, why didn’t he give the office a call?  Sure, the fat man was in competition with Spirits & Such, but if people were getting hurt...

He didn’t want to think about it.  Instead, he turned away from the conversation to glance backwards at the place where the evil spirit had been exorcized.  Serizawa had done a good job; there was hardly any residue left behind, except for a few small wisps of negativity.

Both spirits disappeared when Serizawa exorcized the first.  That means there must have been some sort of link between them.

He walked over to the site of the exorcism, and knelt down to get a closer look.  He had never made any effort to study the exact workings of evil spirits the way Serizawa did, so most of the time he was generally clueless about what might have created it unless the source was particularly obvious.  But this time, his curiosity was drawn in by an irregularity: when the spirit had been blasted with Serizawa’s power, Shigeo had noticed something that almost looked like a cord trailing away from it.

A trace... could they have been part of a larger spirit?

He felt out with his aura and found nothing.

“What’cha doin’?”

Shou leaned down over him, and though his hands were still casually tucked away in his jacket pockets, Shigeo could sense the way the redhead’s aura had drawn up defensively after his own had spread out in the search.

Shigeo frowned.  “I don’t think that was everything,” he admitted, gathering up what little residue of the minor evil spirit remained on the sidewalk in a bubble of power and lifting it up for Shou to see.  “It wasn’t strong enough.  And it didn’t pass on... it just disappeared.”

“A lot of agnostics would argue that those are the same thing,” Shou pointed out jokingly, but frowned after Shigeo didn’t laugh.  “Hey, come on-- that was funny.  Aren’t you supposed to be able to laugh now?”

Shigeo gave him a withering look.  “That’s not it... I just don’t understand it... where did it go?”  He felt confused, and also sad.  The spirits had asked him for help.  But he had failed.

“It probably ran away after it realized we meant business.  I’ll keep an eye out for it, okay?  Don’t get so worked up over it,” the redhead shrugged.  “Your power is all over the place.  You’re suffocating me here.”

“I’m not...” Shigeo blinked.  “Oh.”  He cleared his throat.  “Sorry about that... it just...”

“I know.  Ritsu told me.”

Shigeo’s smile slipped.  “What?  Oh.  Right...”  That made sense.  Since Shou and Ritsu were close, it made perfect sense that his psychic mishaps would have eventually come up.  It wasn’t like it was a private matter, anyway.  And it didn’t bother him, because it wasn’t a problem.  There was no problem with his powers acting up unconsciously, or with Ritsu being concerned enough about it to bring up the issue with Shou.  That was fine.  It didn’t make him angry, or sad, and it certainly didn’t make him feel guilty...

No, there was no problem at all.

“Anyway, it’s fine,” Shigeo said, pushing up from his kneeling position to take the bubble of spiritual leftovers back from Shou.  “I was just taking care of the residue.”

The specifics behind an act of exorcism were always situational; depending on the type or strength of a spirit, there were different requirements to actually do the job.  Shigeo had met and exorcized many spirits before, but his technique rarely changed.  He simply didn’t need to change it.  If you forced enough psychic energy into a spirit, it would be exorcized.  He hadn’t even realized other people did anything different until relatively recently.  Some people utilized chants, or specific rites passed on from generation to generation, while others used specifically-crafted tools.

Lately, his method of exorcism had proven to be rather destructive, though, so Shigeo was glad that Serizawa had stepped forward to take care of the spirit.  His technique was far more developed: probably for the simple fact that he had been doing it for longer.  So, when it came time to cast out the residuals, Shigeo attempted to emulate the older esper, shrinking the bubble tightly around the spiritual mass and transforming the energy through his own into harmless vapor.

When it was done, he glanced over towards Shou, wondering if the redhead might compliment his technique or otherwise acknowledge his progress, but the boy’s attention was elsewhere.  When Shigeo followed his gaze to see what he was looking at, he saw Serizawa still talking with the woman in reassuring tones.  He watched as the man handed her a business card, which was accepted with tearful thanks.

Shou was also watching the scene, a softness in his icy eyes that Shigeo hadn’t seen before. “I’ve known him for a long time,” the redhead began, “but I’ve never seen Serizawa-san as happy as he is now.  It’s good to see that he’s doing okay.”  

Shigeo nodded.

“But man... he sure is working hard,” Shou sighed, shrugging off his momentary vulnerability by lacing his pale fingers together and stretching his arms out over his head with a yawn.  “I mean, you probably would’ve been fine with that spirit attack even if he didn’t push you out of the way, right?  That’s too much effort for me.”

Surprised, Shigeo glanced over towards the redheaded esper.  He had never taken Shou as someone who was particularly lazy or who was afraid to go the extra mile: after all, he had led a whole rebellion to overthrow his own father, and burned his house down on top of that.

But Shou’s expression wasn’t a judgemental one, the way his words might have implied.  Instead, he had an unreadable look that was almost wistful, almost... sad.

Some of the bitter tension in Shigeo’s heart loosened.  Maybe he had been too quick to assume that Shou had something against him.  Maybe he was just going through something... the way he also was.

“...I’m sorry.”

The redhead glanced towards him with a look that was both amused and lightly surprised.  “Wha?  What for?

Shigeo shifted awkwardly.  “It’s just... I thought you were angry with me or something for a while, so I think that maybe I haven’t been treating you fairly because of it.”  He smiled a little.  “I guess I’ve been a little tense lately... sorry.”

Shou stared at him for a moment, and then suddenly looked away.  His hands clenched into fists.  “No."

“Eh?”

“I said no.  Don’t apologize to me.  I don’t want it.”  The redheaded boy kicked at the ground.  It was typical of Ritsu’s brother to make that startling sort of conclusion, the kind that seemed to come out of nowhere before smacking you across the head with its sincerity.  “Damn it.”

Shigeo blinked.  He was confused again.  “I don’t understand.”

Shou grimaced and put a hand to his head in exasperation.  Yes, this unfairly powerful esper could be frighteningly observant, but he could also be as dense as a rock.  “You...” he laughed, and turned his eyes on Shigeo through splayed fingers.  “...do you even realize how messed up everything is right now?  Or... are you just trying to ignore it?”  

He watched as the dark-haired esper’s expression changed.  So he does realize, then.  But how much does he know about—?

“I know that things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be,” Shigeo began, interrupting his thoughts, “but I’m trying to focus on myself right now.  I want to figure out what I want to do... not to think about what other people want from me.”  The esper offered him a patient smile, though the look in his dark eyes hardly matched it.  “I hope you can understand.”

...he’s changed again, Shou realized, watching the strange, patternless ways in which Shigeo’s hair moved.  It was in sync with his aura, his shifting powers... that massive, rolling force that always seemed to be staring , like a shapeless face in a dark window on a darker night.

Shou felt goosebumps raise on his skin, but refused to look away.  He would not, under any circumstances, fall to the same cowardice that everyone else around this esper seemed to.  No matter how sincere he seemed, or how understanding, Shou had seen the kinds of terrible changes that happened to people who only held a fraction of the power of the one in front of him now.

Shigeo stared back at Shou, who had eyes as blue as glacier ice.  Not the kind that covered most of the Antarctic, white and gleaming against the ever-burning sun, but the sort of ice that lurked beneath the coldest, darkest oceans.  The deepest layer of an iceberg, an ancient lake.  A fire so hot it burned blue.  Those eyes were blazing at Shigeo now, though for what reason still eluded him.

It was this failure to understand just what Shou was attempting to get at that made Shigeo’s irritation rise up in a similarly firelike way, as if the redheaded esper’s words were stoking the flames.  “...is there something you’re trying to tell me?”  If there was, he would rather it just be said so that he could decide how to react.  If it was positive, then Shigeo would smile and thank him.  If it was negative, it would be ignored.

But Shou said nothing; the young esper only shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“If you have something to say to me, you should just say it,” Shigeo pressed, feeling his aura lean forward over Shou, scrutinizing the esper underneath its shadow.  Rei Kurosaki had danced around him, too, before finally coming out with it and revealing her suspicion.  “Do you have a problem with me?”

“No.  Not with you, anyway,” Shou responded.

What is that even supposed to mean?

He didn’t get a chance to ask.  Just when he was about to give in to his frustration and demand an explanation, Serizawa returned to them, holding his notepad in one hand and scratching his head with the other.  “Alright.  With what information that woman was able to give us... well, I at least have an idea of what might be going on here.”

“Really?”  Shigeo’s aura snapped back into place as he turned to Serizawa, feeling yet again surprised.  He still had no ideas about what the source of the mystery in the area was.  Despite having wandered all over the area, he still had yet to sense the presence of any kind of evil spirit that could be powerful enough to create all of the phenomena described by those they had interviewed.  There had only been that one strange feeling back in the basement of the abandoned building, and even that had disappeared.

“Mhm.  Although...” Serizawa took a glance at his watch.  “It’s about getting close to the time Reigen asked us to come back to the office.  Once I’m more sure about my theory, I’ll tell you about it.”

“Oh.  Okay.”  A sense of disappointment went through him, and the streetlights lining the road they stood on flicked on.  Shigeo gazed up at them.  He didn’t have a watch, and didn’t know what time they were supposed to come on, but Shou was frowning.

“Shou, if you’d like to come back with us, then—”

Shou cut Serizawa off.  “Nah.  Thanks for the offer, but I’ve gotta go take care of some of my own stuff.  I’m sure it’ll be super fun for you to hang out with a former water cooler salesman, though.  Good luck!”  A wave, and he was gone: literally.  As the light bent Shou Suzuki out of the visible spectrum, Shigeo sensed his aura retreat.

“That was... awfully sudden,” Serizawa remarked, looking confused.  “Did I say something wrong?”

Shigeo shook his head.  “No.”  He did not elaborate: he had already put the uncomfortable conversation with Shou Suzuki away in his mind.  Thinking about it would just frustrate him, and that was the opposite of the mentality he had been trying to achieve.

The man gave him a curious look.  “Alright, then... is everything okay?”

He nodded, but Serizawa still looked doubtful.  Luckily, the man at least had the grace to move on from the subject.

“It seems as if the spiritual activity peaks in the early hours of the morning, before the sun rises,” Serizawa noted, still fussing over the notes in his pocketbook as they began to walk again: this time, back towards where they had left the car.  “So we’ll need to come back tomorrow.  If nothing comes of that, we can try pursuing that trace you found earlier, but that should be a last resort.”

Shigeo nodded.  He felt a little weary at the idea of waking up so early for a job, but it really did seem important.  “Okay.  What should we do until then?”

Serizawa closed the book of notes with a snap, and lifted up his left arm to check the time on the watch that hung around his wrist.  Shigeo noticed the extra holes poked into the band; viewing them, one could envision the timeline of progress that the older esper had made since leaving the confines of his self-isolation, progressing from a skinny NEET to a fully-fledged adult.

He was proud of him.  In a way, seeing Serizawa’s progress made him more confident in his own; Shigeo had always related his own experiences to Serizawa’s ever since they met.  From trouble with their power to the crushing fear of themselves, from isolation to meeting Master Reigen, their lives ran along similar patterns, sang a similar song.  It was part of why Shigeo found himself quite comfortable in the man’s presence.  It also helped that Serizawa was like a rock, both physically and mentally.  While he wasn’t necessarily always calm, he had an air of stability that others could count on.

“Master Reigen said that we should meet him back at the office around seven o’clock so we can get dinner together.  We have a little while until then though, so...” the man paused.  “Well, is there anything you want to do?”

Shigeo thought about it.  “Actually... yes, there is.”

⸻⸻

“This is Terror,” Shigeo explained, kneeling down next to the pudgy-looking Shiba dog.  “He’s the Human-Faced Dog.”

The dog, who had greeted Shigeo with a wagging tail and exposed belly, did not really seem like one with a human face to Serizawa, but the man nodded as if he understood anyway.  “I see.  He doesn’t appear to be a spirit, though.  Why did we come here?”

“Master Reigen knows the owner.  A while ago, we took a job that involved the exorcism of some urban legends.  Terror was one of them... or at least, he seemed to think so.  Turns out, it was just some kids who thought it was funny to draw on a dog’s face and charge for pictures,” Shigeo glowered.  “He’s a nice dog, though.”

“I can’t disagree with that.”  Terror certainly did seem to be a friendly dog, albeit one that was on the older side.  “Do you like dogs, Shigeo?”

“Mhm.  They’re nice.  But I wouldn’t want to own one, I think.  Having a cat could be nice, though.”  A glum look crossed the boy’s expression for a moment, and while Serizawa had a strong suspicion as to what it could be about, he didn’t ask.

“So this dog was once a popular urban legend... you know, I used to read about those online,” the older esper prompted, thinking back on the days where he was one of, if not the most consistent Internet users to have ever lived.  “I wasn’t exactly on many paranormal boards, but it wasn’t hard to run into a post about them either.  I might have even read about this one.”

Shigeo eyed him.  “Are you afraid of them?”

“No.  They’re just stories people share with one another for fun, aren’t they?  Some of them might be real, but they’re not usually any different from other evil spirits.  I can be a bit spooked about certain kinds of insects, however.”

“I feel the same way,” Shigeo agreed.  “Not about the insects.  The stories.  Master Reigen found them scary, and even another psychic who helped us on the job, but I didn’t get it.”

Serizawa chuckled lightly.  “Well, it’s not as if either of us run in a lot of popular circles.  Although, if there were any urban legends about not being able to find a bathroom when you need one... that would certainly be terrifying.”

They both laughed.  Shigeo had told him before about the disastrous encounter that had almost landed their employer in jail, so the reference wasn’t lost on either of them.  When Shigeo laughed, however, there was an electricity to the air, and Serizawa’s aura bristled defensively in reflex to the sudden flux of energy.

Both sensed the reaction of the other; both fell quiet.  Terror simply wagged his tail impatiently until Shigeo reached out to pet him again, purposefully avoiding Serizawa’s gaze while he did so.

Serizawa restrained the sigh that wanted to drain out from his lungs.  This was no easy task that Reigen had assigned him.

“Just talk to him,” the blonde man had asked, almost desperately.  A window had been opened in the office, but the air still smelled of the cigarette smoke that trailed out from within Reigen’s fingers.  “You know more about this than I do.  You can relate to him better.  It won’t be hard.”

He certainly didn’t fault Arataka for considering the issue to be an altogether simple matter; from the perspective of a non-psychic, Sigeo’s accidental misfires of power were analogous to the typical teenage mood swings.  But it was different.  Of course he had endured his own accidents, driven by emotion and fear, isolation and exclusion— all those factors working together in a vengeful and destructive harmony, but the contrast was apparent.

Serizawa, like most espers, had been one since birth.   And while he had not met many others before his time in Claw, that period of time was more than enough for him to come to understand a few fundamental characteristics of psychic power.  He had observed the unique auras of the higher echelon and the lower divisions, dozens of true espers and hundreds of those that Claw’s boss had shared his power with, and yet he had only even once observed an aura that even closely resembled that of the boy.  And that aura had belonged to Toichiro Suzuki.

Thinking of the man, he was unable to restrain the sigh that came out of him this time.  Luckily, Shigeo seemed to be ignoring him, instead focusing on the gentle dog that they had come to see.

Serizawa’s relationship with Suzuki had been... complicated.  That was the least there was to say about it, in fact.  For a long time, he had regarded Claw’s CEO as some sort of personal savior, a man who had pulled him from the darkness of his isolation into the light of a future... but that future had only been gilded, and Suzuki had been a fundamentally selfish man.  He was neither a savior or a person who believed in the futures of those he deemed powerful enough to surround himself with— he was just another powerful person who craved even more power.  Like so many were, espers or otherwise.

And while he had known for a much longer time that Toichiro Suzuki was none of the things he had wished him to be before finally accepting that such was the case—thanks to Shigeo, no less—Serizawa could still not remember exactly when he had realized it.  Realizing something and accepting it... those were two very different things.  The concepts were so antithetical to one another that the definitions of each tended to get lost in the debris of their union, like matter and antimatter, or positive and negative charges.  Within all of that haze, though, he remembered the person that was impossible to ignore.  The culmination of all of Toichiro’s greatest strengths and greatest flaws: his son, Shou Suzuki.

Watching that boy grow up under the impossible conditions his father instilled upon him was probably one of the most difficult things Serizawa had ever experienced.  He had tried to lend his assistance where he could, but his ability had been limited, and his trepidation, his fear of disappointing Toichiro— that had been great.  Too great.

For Shou Suzuki, Serizawa had not been able to do enough.

Perhaps things could be different for Shigeo.

He gathered his courage.  “Shigeo, listen—”

And there it was again; the rise of static in the air, the physical shift in the space between them that made the air turn sharp and jagged.  These defensive manifestations of Shigeo’s power were more than aura and yet less than a barrier: sometimes, Serizawa wondered if it was even a conscious move from the boy, or if it was similar to the same disturbance that sometimes sent the same esper’s raven-hair loose from gravity, free to travel in invisible winds.

The dog in Shigeo’s arms lifted its head and whined.  The sound caused the boy to blink, as if shaken from a dream, and the static fell rapidly away.

Serizawa let out a breath.  He still wanted to say something, but the moment had passed him by, and try as he might, it was impossible to ignore the fact that it was not an irrational anxiety that prevented him from speaking up.  So rather than agitate the force in front of him, Serizawa simply stood up and offered the esper a patient smile.  “...I suppose Terror thinks we should be getting back.”

“Oh.”  Shigeo looked down at the dog.  “Okay.”

⸻⸻⸻

Ramenya Shiokarai Shio, despite its repetitive name, had a particular ambiance to it that most ramen restaurants in the various cities of Japan tended to have: the lights were low and warm, putting the establishment into a perpetual and serene golden-hour sunset under which people could eat and drink peacefully.  The small size of the restaurant helped contribute to the cozy atmosphere, but it also meant that more often than not, there was little room to squeeze in, and they were often resigned to the bar— a place where Shigeo did not prefer to sit.

“Must be a slower day,” Reigen remarked casually as they entered, sighting several open seats and small tables.  “You guys sit down.  I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”

The choice of where to sit did not take much time at all: both espers immediately moved for the corner-most table without a single word exchanged between them.  It was part of the unspoken introvert code they both abided by: if there was a corner, you took the corner, and if there was a machine you could use to order to avoid a conversation, you used it.  This restaurant did not have such a machine, but that was alright for this particular excursion.  They had Master Reigen, who always did enough talking for the two of them combined.

After sitting down and making himself comfortable, Shigeo’s eyes wandered aimlessly around the restaurant.  He had been to the place many times before with Reigen, but those had only been after particularly difficult or exhausting cases.  This time, it was neither.  It was nice, of course, but it also made him worry... did the office really have enough money to be doing this kind of thing?  Reigen had always been so concerned about his finances to a point where he was never shy about reminding his pupil to only order two slices of chashu pork, but now it felt like the man was being overly lenient with him, and had been ever since...

Well, ever since that day.

“Serizawa,” Shigeo began, peering up from the menu in his hands, “when did you learn that Master Reigen was a fraud?”

It was a good thing that Serizawa had yet to pick up the glass of ice water that he had asked for from the passing waiter, because he might have spit it out otherwise.  “W-well, that’s...” the man frowned.  “I, uh...”

“I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me,” the younger esper added.  “I was just wondering.”

Serizawa nodded, and took a moment to clear his throat.  “Ahem.  Well, I knew before he hired me, if that’s what you mean.”

Shigeo blinked.  “Ah.  He told you then?  Then... why did you decide to work here?”

A shake of the head.  “No, that’s not it.  He didn’t tell me before then... in fact, he didn’t tell me until after he told you.  It was while you were still in the hospital.  He seemed quite surprised when I told him that I already knew, though I don’t quite understand why... I thought he only put on a show for the clients.”

“But you always seemed to respect him so much,” the boy probed, slightly confused by the response.

“I did.  And I do.”  The smile that crossed the man’s expression was gentle, as if he was looking back on a fond memory, or listening to sweet music playing through the walls of another room.  “Arataka is a genuinely impressive person, despite what he thinks about himself.”

Shigeo couldn’t help but smile too.  His heart had relaxed since its earlier wave of aggression, soothed by the man’s words as well as by the gentle ambience that surrounded them both like the steam from a warm bath.  “Yes... he sure is.”

Suddenly, a loud belch from the lungs of the same man who was the subject of their conversation interrupted the gentle scene as Reigen returned to sit down in an extra chair he had quickly ‘borrowed’ from another table.

Serizawa and Shigeo shared a knowing glance with one another.  Yes, Reigen Arataka was an admirable person, but he could also be horrifically crass.

“What’re we ordering?”  The conman questioned, tipping back his seat to whisk an additional menu from the same empty table he had taken the chair from and scanning the vertically arranged letters with a hungry gleam in his eyes.

Shigeo frowned slightly, mostly out of confusion.  Hasn’t he memorized that menu by now?  It’s not like we ever order anything different from the usual...

“Aha!”  The blonde grinned, and flipped the menu back around for both of them to see.  “Look!”  He had his finger pointing to a particular item on the laminated sheet, but neither Shigeo nor Serizawa were unable to decipher any significance from it.  At their confused stares, Reigen went on, saying: “—they’ve lowered the price on the beef negimaki!  If we all order it, we’ll be saving twice as much money than if we get the harumaki.”

Shigeo laughed lightly at the display.  It was both comedic and comfortably familiar.  “It’s good to see that you haven’t changed too much, shishou,” he said, offering his master a small smile.

The conman raised blonde eyebrows with a questioning look.  “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?  Are you mocking my business acumen?”

The smile faded.  Oh no.  Did I misread the situation?  “Ah.  I just meant—”

A hand placed itself softly upon his head, rapidly ruffling up the night-black tufts with an affectionate motion.  “I’m just messing with you, Mob,” Reigen smiled reassuringly, then paused.  “But, seriously, kid... I think we should order the harumaki.  It’s, er, in the spirit of adventure and all that.”

Shigeo nodded happily.  “Okay.”

⸻

Reigen ate much more quickly than either of his employees, so as they ate, the man regaled them with tales of the suspicious emails and pop-ups he had been receiving on his work laptop ever since signing up for a “totally legit” (in the conman’s words) movie-watching site.  Serizawa listened patiently, fully comprehending the fact that his boss had almost certainly violated one of the most cardinal rules of the internet—that being clicking on whatever seemed prosperous or eye-catching without a second thought—but nodded along with sympathy.

Shigeo, on the other hand, had tuned out long before that point, while the conversation had still been on a subject thoroughly beyond his comprehension: advice on a speech Serizawa was meant to give to his night class later in the week.

“You just have to act like you know what you’re talking about,” Reigen had stressed, pointing his noodle-laden chopsticks at the man sitting across the table.  “Even if you don’t.  Just stand real proud, project your voice, and if you forget something, make it up.”

Serizawa frowned.  “Isn’t that academic dishonesty?”

“Not if it gets you the grade.  What they’re testing for isn’t comprehension, it’s confidence.  That’s the whole point of public speaking.  Pretend you’re a politician or something.”

“...I’d rather not.  Sorry, Reigen-san, but that just doesn’t sound like a good idea...”

“That— I was just testing you, Serizawa!  Now I know you’re an honest student, so I’m sure you’ll do well...”

It was around that point that he had allowed the tones of the conversation between the two adults to fade away and blend into the background of his perception, and Shigeo turned his eyes towards the window.  As a traditional restaurant, the windows were fronted with vertical wooden bars and it was not easy to see in or out, but that was fine; he was content with observing the obscured shapes and colors through them.  The people who would walk along the narrow road outside, the various lighted advertisements that would sometimes flicker on and off according to the intensity of his focus... it all helped ease him into a tranquil state wherein he, too, felt as if he could melt away and become part of the restaurant’s relaxed mood.

Perhaps it was this relaxed state of being and his focus on the outside that made him neglect to acknowledge the malignant force steadily building up inside of the restaurant until it had come right up to them and forced a hand down upon their table, causing the old wooden surface to shake and their dishes to clatter loudly against one another.

Shigeo jumped at the noise; the second startling encounter of his day.  Outside, a few people made sounds of surprise when a streetlight’s bulb inexplicably burst into a mist of glass and sparks.  Inside, Serizawa’s eyes darted to look at Shigeo with an alarmed look, but his focus was quickly drawn back to the man standing beside them.

“A wraith,” Shigeo said, albeit without meaning to.

“The hoarder,” Serizawa said, for the same reason.

“Ah,” said Reigen, who was able to transform his irritated expression into a passably friendly one.  “Err... hello.”

“You,” the man glared.  “you... you...”

Reigen blinked.  “Aha, me?”

Shigeo remembered this person— it was a previous client.  The ugly, half-bald man who had been generating his own living wraith by willfully indulging his own negative emotions and hoarding disorder.  He looked even worse now, though it was hard to consider that possible.  Since their last encounter, the man’s teeth had gone from the deeply stained yellow characteristic of a heavy smoking addict to a color that was closer to that of tar.  His eyebags had progressed down his face, and their dark appearance made him look somewhat ghoulish.  It was such an exaggerated appearance that, if Shigeo had not met the man before, he might have thought him for someone wearing heavy stage makeup.

It wasn’t the man’s physical appearance that most concerned him, however.  It was the wraith, similar to before, but in a much more advanced stage: now, the cloying cloud of negativity had become less like a gas and more like a liquid, pouring from the man’s eyes and mouth and hands like blood.  When he spoke, that viscous liquid would spatter from the man’s mouth to the floor, and some had even landed on the table.

Shigeo’s stomach turned.  This guy... in this stage, he must be spreading negativity to everyone around him.  But how did it even get this bad?  When we left, he seemed fine... was the exorcism not performed correctly?

“You ruined my life!”

Despite the fact that Reigen was unable to perceive the dark spiritual excretion that flew from the man’s lips, Shigeo still raised a hand to direct it away from his master.  In this stage, even the runoff from a wraith like this could be toxic.

“Ruin your life?”  Reigen’s face scrunched up in annoyed confusion.  “Look, I’m sorry that you’re... uh, whatever’s going on, but I don’t think that’s a reasonable accusation.  My employees and I are trying to have dinner here, so— woah!”

The man had thrown a fist at Reigen.  Although, due to an obvious state of impairment (not only was the man’s mouth thick with that blood-like substance, it was also heavy with the smell of drink), it had missed.

In that act of missing, however, the drunk man had thrown himself too far forward, and was unable to act against the forces of gravity that pulled him down onto the table.  Shigeo and Serizawa, on the other hand, who had no such obligation to the laws of physics, were able to move out of the way with little warning time.  Additionally, both espers made it a point to slow the man’s fall, and to keep him from falling on any of the tableware.  Still, when he did fall, the old creaky tabletop went with him, and both clattered to the ground.

The restaurant’s few inhabitants, who had been eying the commotion as it was in its early development, now gasped at the scene.  One well-dressed woman even came over to Shigeo, gently grasping his arm and asking: “My goodness, are you alright?”

“I—”

“You- you!”  The man was up on his feet again, the front of his clothing stained and sticky with noodles, but the fury was still in his eyes, and it looked like he was liable to charge at Reigen again at any moment.

Shigeo moved away from the woman, and was prepared to take a step forward when his arm was caught again— this time, by Serizawa.  “Hold on now,” Serizawa told him, his tone urging caution.  “The owner seems to be coming over.  We don’t need to do anything.”

“But he—”  despite Shigeo’s reluctance to leave his master alone in what could very well be a dangerous conflict, Serizawa ended up being right, as the owner’s voice cut harshly through the air less than a second after the prediction had been made.

“What’s going on here?”

Shigeo allowed Serizawa to pull him out of the manager’s way, and watched as Reigen transitioned into a familiar mode; the kind he always put on when it was a situation that he believed could be handled with charisma.  His suit was stained with the loose broth that had gone everywhere when the table went down, but he still projected an inarguable air of confidence.

“See?”  Serizawa smiled.  “It’s going to be alright.  They’ll get this sorted out.”

“...right.”  Shigeo frowned, and tried to let go of the tightness that had made its home in his chest and lungs.  It had all happened remarkably quickly; the entire encounter from approach to table-crash must have only transpired over fifteen or twenty seconds, but his heart was still racing from the shock of being startled, and it was hard to keep his palms from sweating.

It’s fine.  Master Reigen can handle anything...   His frown deepened.  But that man is still being afflicted with his wraith.  If we don’t do something, it could end up —

“A psychic!  He’s a damn fucking psychic, and he ruined my fucking life!”  The ugly man exclaimed, raising his hand and pointing at Reigen.  “He told me he was going to get rid of the spirit plaguing me, but instead his assistant blew the roof off my house !”

Shigeo flinched.  The lights in the restaurant, which had previously cast such a gentle atmosphere through the place, flickered erratically and swung from their fixtures.  The few customers, who had been entirely enraptured by the conflict at that point, made exclamations of alarm.  Then there were whispers.  Serizawa’s grip tightened unconsciously on Shigeo’s arm, but the young esper was hardly even aware of it.  His focus was on the ooze creeping along the floor.  The nearest patron had been hit by the latest splatter, along with the restaurant’s owner.  It was an ugly sight, and sure to make the already-bad situation worse.

But he couldn’t do anything about it.  When he had tried to expel it, the force of his power had been stronger than he intended it to be, that excess power splintering off in unintentional directions.  Thankfully, Serizawa had reacted in time to keep anything from breaking by coating the restaurant with his own power, but the clash of their auras had startled them both.

I don’t get it.  Why does this keep happening whenever I use my powers?  Shigeo grit his teeth, prepared to try again—

Serizawa’s power resisted the effort.  No, it communicated, forcing itself between Shigeo and the rest of the restaurant, a strongly rooted tree in a hurricane, a cliff facing the sea.  Stop.

“He cursed me,” the ugly man went on, glaring at the nervous bystanders.  “He’s the reason nobody wants to hire me... why my insurance claim got denied... and my car got repossessed, since I kept forgetting my payments... that must’ve been his fault, too!”

“That’s not true,” Shigeo interjected suddenly.  With his powers being actively suppressed by Serizawa (which was probably for the best but still felt wholly upsetting), his anger suddenly burst out within the shout of his voice.  “That’s not true at all!  We helped you.”

“Helped me?”  The ugly man scoffed angrily.  “You guys couldn’t even get rid of the evil spirit that was making my life a living hell!”

“There wasn’t a spirit haunting you,” Shigeo insisted, his hands tightening into fists, “—you created that spirit.  You were the cause of all your own problems; you just weren’t able to admit it.  And you’re still not.  You’ve just made it worse!”

A spark; somewhere across the restaurant, a glass fell and shattered, but no one noticed.  Everyone was gazing wordlessly at the quiet boy who had suddenly become very loud.

The man stared at him.  The wraith did too, gazing soullessly with its empty, oozing eye sockets.

“I know it’s hard to admit it,” Shigeo went on, his tone softening as he realized just how forceful his voice had become during the exchange, “but you have to if you want to be different.  You have to be able to realize what you’re doing isn’t just hurting yourself, but the people around you, too.”

“What are you talking about?  Change... why would I want to change?”  The man asked, a genuine perplexion crossing his face.  “I haven’t done anything wrong.  It’s you guys who messed everything up for me... I don’t need to admit anything.” 

Shigeo could only stare.  There was no safe way to express his fury.  He was not only angry, but furious, he realized suddenly, although unlike before, the realization did not come with any pangs of fear for what he might do.  These were his emotions, and he was right to feel them, wasn’t he?  So why... why was everyone staring at him?  Why was Serizawa holding him back ?  Out of everyone, he... he should have been able to understand.

But he doesn’t.  No one does.  No one can.

“Mob...”  Reigen pursed his lips, his eyes drifting to the ceiling and the lights.  What he really wanted to do was lay out some serious verbal thrashings, since this guy was way out of line, but the situation was tense enough as it was, and Mob...

The con artist smiled a strained smile, and offered it to the former client with as much cordiality as he could muster.  “Listen, sir... if you’ve had issues since the exorcism, you have my business card; why don’t you call for a consultation and we can sort this out?  I’d be happy to offer you a discount.  Does fifty percent sound alright to you?”

Shigeo watched the dark form of the wraith clinging to the man split open, revealing a wide grin with far, far too many teeth.

“A consultation,” the man spat, sending droplets of black ooze flying from his crusted lips, “I don’t need another one of your fucking consultations.  Making me pay money for a problem you caused— who the hell do you think you are?  You think just because you have freaky powers you can push me around?”

“That’s not at all what I was saying,” Reigen tried, lifting his hands in a placating gesture.  “I’m just saying that we don’t have anything to do with your problem...”

“—your assistants blew up my house!”

Reigen could feel his temple pulse like a plucked string under the pressure of his frustration and the force it required to keep his expression from morphing into something much less friendly.  Even so, he couldn’t help from clicking his tongue in annoyance— it was a bad habit of his, a way to tell that he was truly pissed off.  “You said you had insurance, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, well I didn’t file the claim until after one of your people went and blew up the city, and they denied my claim!”

For a moment, Reigen was shocked into silence.  Then he collected himself. “That has nothing to do with us,” he lied, and turned instead to address the owner of the restaurant, who’s expression had gone suddenly dark.  “Listen, this man just attempted to assault the both of us.  You should seriously call the police or something.”

The owner of the restaurant seemed to mull on the idea for a moment.  Then he turned to face the wraith-afflicted man.  “I’m terribly sorry for the trouble these people have caused you,” he apologized, before setting his sights on Reigen.  “As for you ... I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave.”

⸻⸻

The cool night air did nothing to quell the waves of energy that sought to surge out from Shigeo as he stormed out into it, turning sharply away from the restaurant towards an unknown direction, but the esper focused on it, refusing—or trying to refuse—to allow his emotions to get the better of him.  But it was just...

It’s just not fair.  None of that was fair.

He let out a frustrated sigh, kicked at the ground with the point of his shoe, and felt alarmed when he saw the road develop a new set of fractures in the place where he had done so.

“Shigeo.”

Shigeo’s aura bristled angrily, spikes of cosmic colors firing out from the center.  “I don’t want to talk to you right now, okay?  You were right.  I know you were right.  I know that I was only going to make it worse, and that wasn’t what the situation needed , but...”  he huffed.  “I’m still angry.  And I’m angry with you, Serizawa-san.”

“I know.”

“I know you know!”  Shigeo groaned.  That’s the worst part.  He was, of course, aware of the fact that he was probably being unreasonable.  However, his awareness did not correlate with his emotions, and his emotions had always been stronger than anything else.  The anger was physical within him, hammering against the cage of ribs around his heart and sparking out in angry lashes of power that could put any solar storm to shame.

He had been expecting Serizawa to speak again, to give him another thing to lash out against.  And Shigeo had almost wanted Serizawa to argue with him— at least that way, there would be some way to release some of that building pressure inside of his chest.  But he didn’t.  The man had gone silent, although his presence was still there, as steady as ever.  

Shigeo sighed.

“Oi!  Mob!  Serizawa!  Hold up, you two, don’t go off without me!”  Reigen jogged up behind them, a light sheen of sweat covering his forehead.  “I paid for our meal... and for the damages.  Man, that guy was a little crazy, huh?”

“Yes,” Serizawa agreed.  “Although... I’d say more than a little.”

“Yeah, me too, but I wasn’t gonna be the first one to say it,” the blonde man agreed with a nod, “anyway, now that that’s all over, how about... er...” it was only then that the conman seemed to register the tense atmosphere held between the two espers, and he fell awkwardly silent.

Serizawa was the first to speak again, doing so after fishing out his wallet and producing a few bills.  “Thank you for dinner, Reigen-san,” the esper smiled, and handed him the money.  “Here’s my part of the bill.  I should be going home now, though.”

“Ah.”  Reigen blinked.  “Right.  Of course.  Good work today.”

“Thank you,” Serizawa nodded, and turned in the opposite direction of the office.  It was silent between them as he walked away, but before he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight, Shigeo felt the man’s aura brush gently against his own.  It offered reassurance.  Sympathy.

Shigeo, with a small amount of reluctance, responded in kind.  An apology.

When the aura was gone and they had said their silent psychic goodbyes, Shigeo began walking once more.  Reigen caught up to him quickly, keeping in stride with his hands tucked away in the pockets of his ramen-stained suit.

“Mob…”  Reigen’s voice was regretful.  The sound of it was grating on Shigeo’s ears, and he quickened his stride.  “Hey, Mob.”

Shigeo stopped short and rounded on his master, who had stopped walking and was gazing at him and his anger with a sad expression.

A wind picked up in the street.

“Why didn’t you explain?”  Shigeo questioned, glowering at his master with narrowed eyes and a tight frown.  “We didn’t start anything, and he was lying, and you... you didn’t do anything.  You just offered him a discount.”

Reigen sighed.  “Explaining wasn’t going to help, Mob.”

“Why not?”  He had solved plenty of problems with an explanation before.  Sure, most of those occasions had also come down to psychic showdowns, but the explanation was always what sealed the deal.  And besides, communicating one’s feelings clearly was always the method Reigen advised him to use when in confrontations with another person.  To hear his master backtrack on that now, to say that it wouldn’t help... it felt like he had been lied to.  Again.

“Because they didn’t want to listen.  That client... he wasn’t going to change just because we told him to— especially when he’s been like that for as long as he has.  Eventually, he’ll get to a point where he has to realize it on his own, and he’ll either change, or he won’t.”

“But why should we have to deal with it?”  The wind, which had been slowly ramping up, now whistled past his ears like ghostly howls, low and rumbling like the sounds his tightly clenched jaw forced into the cavity of his skull.  “And why- why did no one else do anything?  Why did we get kicked out?  It was all him!”

Him.   That stupid man who had allowed the wraith to practically consume him.  Why was it not enough the first time they had solved his problem?  And why did he act like it was their fault he couldn’t get his act together?

Shigeo squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that closing off the stimuli around him could help him calm down, but instead the act only thrust him into a static void in which he was alone with his emotions.  And the force at the forefront.  Anger: that deep, tectonic force, the magma that drove continents and skyscrapers alike smashing together.

Some people have to learn the hard way.

He opened his eyes, and realized that he had moved past Reigen, and was now facing in the direction of the restaurant's storefront.  For a moment he blinked, surprised, and then his intention flooded back to him; he had been planning to exorcize the wraith again.  It was what he wanted to do… and he had been going to do it regardless of the consequences.

His master, however, moved into his line of sight once more, physically cutting him off from the site of his aggressive intention.

“We shouldn’t have to deal with it,” Reigen said seriously, the sharp tone of his voice calling Shigeo back to the moment, and away from his anger.  “But things tend to happen regardless of if they should, so there’s not much to say for that.  As for why no one else intervened... well, it’s probably because they thought I was an actual psychic.  Lucky me, I guess.”

“But—”

“Listen, Mob.”  Reigen paused and looked away from him, up towards some distant point in the sky.  “People aren’t always going to treat others the way they should.  Especially if they perceive them to be different in some way.  That’s something that’s always going to happen... even in normal times.  That doesn’t mean it’s right, of course, but...” he sighed.  “It happens.  There’s nothing you can do about that.  What you can do, however, is control how you respond to it.  If you get angry or yell, or use your powers, how do you think an angry person is going to respond?”

Shigeo hesitated.  He was being lined up for a teaching moment, and there was nothing he could do about it.  Even so, his master was right.

“...not well,” he answered eventually.

“Right,” Reigen nodded, and jerked a thumb back towards the restaurant.  “If we responded back in the same way that guy was treating us back there, then everyone in that restaurant would just think worse of psychics.  Sometimes you just have to walk away.”

Shigeo sighed.  “...that’s stupid.”  The tightness in his chest had disappeared, but in its wake was a strange and empty sensation that left him feeling heavy and tired.

“Yep,” Reigen agreed.  “You’re right about that: it is stupid.  But that’s life, kiddo.  It’s not always fair.”

⸻⸻⸻

In the night, Shigeo lay restlessly under the blankets that covered him on the couch.  They had yet to work out any better sleeping arrangement than what was already in place, despite a few new attempts by his little brother to rearrange the apartment’s furniture.  It had been cozy at first, but now things were beginning to feel a little cramped.  Add in his heart full of complicated emotions on top of that, and you had a recipe for the sleepless night he appeared to be in for.

He tossed and turned and occasionally floated; sleep did not come.  When he checked his phone for the time, briefly ducking under the covers so that the display wouldn’t illuminate too much of the room, the screen told him it was almost four in the morning.

He wasn’t even tired.  Despite the toll of the day, it was not only his mind or heart that were restless; even his powers seemed to be restive.

...it’s getting worse.

The frequency of his unintentional uses of power was constantly increasing.  He had come to accept it as best he could; after all, it was only self-expression, and if it happened to startle a few people, or startle himself... well, that was just a part of growing up, wasn’t it?  It was fine.

Outside, however, the stars were singing.

Shigeo pulled the blankets over his head, closed his eyes, but it was growing more and more difficult to ignore.

It began with a low rumbling, and a high whistle— sounds that he alone could hear, if the Shiratori brothers were to be believed, if they were truly unaware of the sounds from space that sang to him in his most sleepless nights.  But the song was hardly a lullaby; rather, Shigeo thought it to be a call.

The strongest of them was the droning voice of the Sun, a slow and rhythmic drumming that was occasionally joined by whistling winds of radiation that swept over the planet, their highest notes curved away into gentle lulls by protective magnetic fields.  But beneath those stentorian tones were lighter whispers: distant and distorted points of light and sound stretching eons: across time and space and darkness, unfathomable darkness, all the way to meet him now.  It was in those whispers, he knew, that the call came from.

He just didn’t know why.

Shigeo sat up and shoved the blankets away.  He wasn’t going to be able to sleep.  Even if he did, the stars and their cosmic song would follow him into his dreams.  That was obvious now.  But he couldn’t lay still, either.  There were too many thoughts in his mind, too many feelings in his heart.  He was still upset with himself over his treatment of Serizawa-- the man had just been trying to help, after all.  But he was so tired of people trying to help.  If he really wanted to do what he wanted, to learn to be himself...

Well, then he’d have to do something on his own, wouldn’t he?

Chapter Text

Shigeo left through the window, recalling how the hinges of the front door had squealed that first night he and Ritsu had come to Master Reigen’s apartment, carefully lifting himself up and through the air, as silent as a passing dream.  

The young esper lingered for a moment, hovering outside of that second-floor flat with his gaze carefully observing the sleeping forms of Ritsu and his master.

Then he turned to the stars, and rose.

⸻⸻⸻

Shigeo Kageyama surveyed the landscape beneath him with bright and open eyes.

He stood suspended in the air with his arms stretched out at either side, one leg drawn slightly up and the other pointing towards the ground.  He was still far from becoming the flying prodigy his brother was, and lacked balance, but no longer felt quite so sick while untethered from the ground.  In fact, now that he had overcome his initial discomfort, it was actually quite comfortable; like being underwater, his power surrounded him on all sides with a gentle pressure that left him no fear of falling.  It brought him back to certain moments of childhood, where he would walk into the pool — not swim, but walk, his powers keeping the water at bay — and look up at the scattered light as it shone down through the water.

Beneath him, the city was dark and silent with the new nightly curfew in place, but it was that same darkness and absence of light pollution that opened it up to the stars.  On a clear, moonless night such as this, with the contours of tall buildings blending in with further mountainous horizons, Seasoning City was lent an atmosphere of a peace it had not achieved for itself in a very long time.

And he was the only one to see it.

Shigeo had glimpsed the immense breadth of the city many times from above in the past, but only ever during moments of chaos— fights, typically, sometimes panic.  Often both.  And never in such quietly peaceful conditions as this.  Now, suspended in space and the twilight hours of time, he was free to simply be .

A smile spread across his face, wide and open, followed shortly by a laugh that started in his heart and came up from his chest like an animal, long caged, leaping out into open, boundless plains.  He laughed, and drifted in starlight, and watched with curious eyes how the world danced around him.  Here in the sky, he was a part of that world, slipping between horizons with no need to think about what he had done, who he was, what people thought of him—

He was free.

He shouted joyfully into the night and angled himself along the line of the horizon, facing the sky above with his back to the ground.  The fabric of his white t-shirt flapped in the wind, and his hair, loose from gravity, whipped around and stung him in the face.  But Shigeo reveled in it anyway.  Here was the fact that he was alive.  He could feel pain, and joy, and wasn’t it incredible?

I’m alive.  I’m me.

Shigeo Kageyama opened his heart to the sky and felt, in turn, that it had opened itself to him.

⸻⸻⸻

Without anyone with him to guide him along a concentrated path, to guide him toward his responsibilities and commitments left behind on the ground, Shigeo allowed himself to simply float and drift according to the whims of the wind, a kite let loose to the air.  He made several wide loops around the city, taking in the familiar-yet-unfamiliar view of his hometown from his heightened perspective, and felt awed at many of the sights.

When a person was on the ground, the place they lived all their life seemed very small, confined to the roads they walked regularly: from home to school, from school to work, from work to home.  Occasionally there were small adventures, like a trip to the mountain, or the beach, or a detour, and all of those felt like exclusive and secret things, a fog of war lifted away in a video game map.  It was another thing entirely to see it all from above, to see how each and every step you had walked before was really nothing more than a short line amidst a greater whole.  And even beyond that, because the city, in all its size, was not infinite.  It might have seemed that way to a regular human, a person who could spend all their life walking the streets of one city and still miss a hundred million details.  But outside of that city there was a whole world , and beyond that...

Shigeo lifted his gaze.  Beyond that...

How could a person reconcile with the concept of infinity?  Knowing that in all your dreams, yet greater things emerged beyond the boundaries of consciousness?  Stars could be described, and galaxies charted, but it was the space , that measurement of nothing between one thing and another that was but could not be seen—the unknowable distance—that remained untouchable for the mind, destined to live on as pathetic approximations, likenesses to things that were like motes of dust to sunlight in terms of similarity.  For a person who lived all their life in a single city, which was a galaxy to an ant and a universe to a microscopic bit of bacteria... how could they ever understand even a close neighbor, such as the moon?

Such was what he often wondered, even if not exactly in those terms.  Such was the wonderings of all creatures upon Earth, big and small, who could turn their eyes to the sky and catch, however distant, a taste of the cosmos.

⸻⸻⸻

Eventually, he returned to the place he had started from, landing silently upon the rooftop of Salt Middle School with no particular knowledge about what had drawn him back.  The door leading into the stairwell was unlocked, and Shigeo let himself in without feeling much guilt.  He wandered empty classrooms for a while, his light footsteps breaking through the strange and liminal silence of a building that to him, was always full of life and activity, even if he himself had never been a part of it until recently.  But it was still easy to picture the bustle of students standing together in hallways, of teachers lecturing in the front of classrooms.  As his mind wandered, the picture came to life, and he walked through it like a ghost haunting a photograph.

Everything had been packed up in a hurry after the early end of the year, and much still remained.  Apparently, notice had come as suddenly to the faculty as it had the students, as there were some classrooms that had yet to even be tidied up for the summer, with chairs pulled out and pencils and textbooks laid across desks.  The chalkboard in his old classroom, 2-1, even had everyone’s goodbye signatures on it where they wished one another good luck and made promises to keep in contact until the next year.  He smiled at the names of his classmates; he had not known many of them, but he would keep a fondness in his heart for them regardless.

He searched for his own name, and was surprised when he could not find it.  He tried again, examining each name with a light touch, tracing his finger across the rough surface of the board- there was Mezato’s, and he had written it nearby, so...

“Ah.”  Shigeo blinked.  Here it was, “Mob”, where he had not even bothered to include his last name...

Mob...

That had been his identity for a very long time.  Mob had been the person who had shut himself away, refused his power and himself, and who was a coward.  But Mob was also the person who had improved himself physically through willpower, who had made bonds with others, and who had fought for those who couldn’t fight.

Shigeo looked down at his hands.  These were Mob’s hands, too, with short nails and clumsy fingers, and it was Mob’s clothes that he was wearing.  His shoes, though... they were Ritsu’s.  He had picked up the wrong pair again.

He laughed a little under his breath.  Shigeo or Mob, picking up the wrong pair of shoes was an everlasting habit.  He just hoped that Ritsu didn’t mind too much.

Ritsu... well, he was Mob’s brother.  And he was also Shigeo’s brother.  Their histories were intertwined through blood and familial bonds, hardship and shared burdens, and the two of them were undeniably close.  Though the memories of his youngest days had grown hazy with time, Shigeo could still recall the profound happiness he had felt when his mother had told him that he was going to have a little brother.

I should’ve told him I was going out... if he wakes up and I’m not there, he’ll worry.

Shigeo frowned.  He did not want to go back.  Not yet.  He needed this time to himself, room to breathe and think.  Still, it would be worthwhile to let him know...

He was reaching for his pocket, to produce his phone and communicate with his brother that way, when he finally remembered the device had been left behind, still tucked under the blanket from when he had last checked the time.

It’ll be fine, he reassured himself.   Ritsu knows I can take care of myself.

It was on his way back to the rooftop that he caught sight of his reflection in a window, and paused, briefly startled and confused.

The window did not make for a very good mirror.  His eyes and hair seemed to fade away into the dark occlusion of the outside and its shadows, and his white shirt stuck starkly out against the rest of his silhouette.  But when he raised a hand to the glass, the movement of the sparse light told him that yes, this was his reflection.

But if that was the case, why couldn’t he recognize himself?

Shigeo peered closer at the mirrored image, and watched it lean towards him in turn.  It was so strange.  He had looked into this reflection many times in the years before, and the picture had always remained more or less the same: his bangs, swept in front of his straight-line eyebrows, his eyes, which had seen but not seen , and his lips, always settled in the blank expression he had forgotten how not to wear.

But now, his hair was up and shifting.  His eyes were open and bright, and his mouth wore a small smile.

Does this face belong to Shigeo, or Mob?

He rested his forehead against the glass, and felt the coolness on his skin.  The answer, he supposed, was simultaneously “both” and “neither”.  He was Shigeo, who was Mob, and they were him.  He was the product of all his experiences, the sum of all his emotions, and more.

I am me.  My name is Shigeo Kageyama, and people call me Mob.  That’s who I am.

He pulled away from the glass, satisfied, but still feeling that he was still missing part of his answer.

⸻⸻⸻

Following the train tracks, it was easy to find the town he and Serizawa had visited the day before.  Flying, as it happened, was much faster than driving, so while the landscape whizzed by him in a blur of shadows, he still spent a moment to stop and admire the river that ran under the bridge separating the town, city, and countryside from one another.  It was a pretty sight— Shigeo had always held an affinity for water and the life that inhabited it.  So, spurred on by his new confidence from knowing he was doing something on his own and after some additional (but brief) consideration, he stepped up onto the bridge, stared down at the dark surface of the river, and promptly launched himself into it.

He cut through the water like a knife.  It was total darkness around him, but he could see perfectly fine with the aid of his power how the rocky riverbed lay below, all the plant life that survived within it, and of course, the fish that swam around him, curious as to who this strange, glowing intruder who had come into their home was.

“Hi,” Shigeo said to the fish, although it only came out as a distorted wave and stream of bubbles, and giggled as the creature swam away.  Then he went on, following the riverbed that consistently kicked up silt and sediment up at him whenever he so much as lightly brushed up against it.  There were a lot of lost items in that riverbed, he realized; entire phones and bicycles and random pieces of metal.

After lifting the majority of what was around him out of the water with a simple pull of power, Shigeo set the things on the riverbank to look it all over for no other reason than simple curiosity.  He wondered if anyone was missing their lost possessions right at that minute, the way he sometimes missed some of the things he had lost long ago.  None of them had been very important, but there was always a unique kind of devastation he experienced upon realizing something was lost, no matter how small of a thing it was.  The concept that something could be there one moment, and gone the next... it made him want to treasure the things that were most important.

He gazed at the pile of scrap for a minute.  Master Reigen would probably try to turn this into another business venture if he told him about it.

Stupid.   He was happy to use his powers to help people, but less so to help his master earn a quick buck.  At least it had been a while since the man had asked him to do anything like that... and it wasn’t as if psychic powers were in particular demand, anyway.  Even so, he fished through the items briefly, thinking that maybe if there was a ring or necklace that they couldn’t find the owner for, or maybe some coins, he could offer his master something .  A thank-you.  The office had to be tight on money, so...

He froze.  His hand had touched upon something that was not a phone, or bike, or loose metal.  It was metal, but it was smooth, and as Shigeo registered the item as a gun he jerked away from it as if the cold metal had managed to burn him.

What was this doing in a river?

Shigeo thought about it.  There weren’t many options to choose from.  A gun wasn’t like a knife, which could be used for good things, like making tasty food or carving pretty wooden dolls.  Guns only did one thing.

He kicked it back into the water.  It wasn’t something he cared to think about.

⸻⸻⸻

The town, like Seasoning City, looked very different from above.  There were even fewer lights here than there had been in the city, though, so he had to draw closer to the ground in order to see anything clearly.

Serizawa-san said that the spirit seemed to be most active in the early morning.

Shigeo glanced up at the sky.  For a moment, he felt transfixed by the sight, the stars, and heard that cosmic hum once more— but he shook it off and focused instead on the position of the moon.  With no phone to tell him the time, he could only guess, but it seemed to have been about two hours since his departure.

I guess I’ll look around until then.

He descended, and landed with a step on the leading ledge of a flat rooftop.  He knew that the people living in this town would all be at home in their beds, sleeping until the hours of the curfew ended, but he was still surprised by the profound silence in the area.  Only the wind brushed past his ears, tousling his hair and clothes.

No spirits, either... that was doubtful, though.  There were spirits everywhere.  Maybe they were sleeping?  No, that wasn’t it.  Dimple had said that spirits didn’t sleep.

Dimple...

Shigeo missed the spirit.  Badly.  He had been missing him ever since the day of the Incident, when the spirit had apparently been pulled back into reality by his “vortex of power” — or so the spirit had claimed.  The technicals didn’t make much sense to him.  In fact, part of him almost wondered whether or not the spirit had come back at all, or if the memory was just a hopeful dream.  If he had come back, he should have been by his side.  But the green spirit had been missing for ages.

He sat down on the ledge with a small sigh, drawing one leg up to his chest to rest his chin upon and leaving the other dangling over the side.

I should’ve brought a jacket.   He had used his barrier when swimming in the river, so he wasn’t wet, but the night was chilly all the same.  Although... Shigeo paused, recalling his training demonstrations at the Awakening Lab.  Could he just... warm up?

His eyebrows drew together in furrowed concentration as he tried to recall the specifics of Go Asahi’s explanation on thermokinetics.  He had said something about what, changing the energy?  That seemed simple enough.

Shigeo brought his hands in front of him and summoned a ball of energy.  It glowed purple-pink in the darkness, reflecting the sky beyond the sky above him, and rippled with waves of power.

He focused.  To warm up, he’d need what... fire?

The ball in his hands shifted orange, and Shigeo peeked an eye open to see it crackling, blazing out of his palms like an erupting spirit that lashed and licked at the air.  Despite the fire being one of his own creation, he was startled, and quickly extinguished the flames.

Okay, maybe not fire.

He summoned another sphere, and folded the energy in his hands this time into bright coils, like those of the space heater his family shared at home in the wintertime, or the induction plate his mom used to cook.  This time, the heat was more controlled, and Shigeo felt himself relax.  That was better.  He was a person who always ran a little on the cold side, even after getting past most of his anemia.  Well, whatever.  That was hardly a problem, since it was easily solved by just wearing more clothes.

Shigeo toyed briefly with the coils of warmth-producing energy in his hands, bending them into different shapes and experimenting with how long he could touch them without burning his skin.  It seemed to be a long time.

He turned his gaze over the town once more.  It was still surprising that no spirits had shown up yet.  Usually, they would have flocked to his outputs of energy, like moths to flame.

He stood up again, dissipating the energy coils as he looked down.  The rooftop he had chosen to land upon was directly above the site of the exorcism, and though the experience of the previous day was still fresh in his mind, the feelings from it were even clearer.

Those spirits... something wasn’t right about them.  I wonder if that’s what Serizawa-san was theorizing about... but why wouldn’t he tell me what it was?   He frowned, feeling slightly irritated.  I guess I’ll find out for myself.

He drew in a breath.  He had done this before, the long-range radar burst, but it had been in the middle of a panic — his house had been burning down, after all — and the finer details were lost on him.  It was similar to the second sight, but also different.

Even still, he gave it his best effort, widening his eyes and, with a flick of the mind, flashing his aura outwards in all directions.

It rippled out like waves, not of light or gravity but some other force, pinging outwards from the center and reflecting back the kind of energy he was searching for.  There was a slight, high note that reverberated through the air, as if someone had tapped on a glass with a crystal, but as it faded, Shigeo found no significant signs of, well, anything.

He sighed.  The exhilaration from the act of going out on his own was fading now, replaced with a dull regret as Shigeo stared gloomily out over the silent town.  Maybe he had been wrong.  Maybe he couldn’t do anything by himself.  Maybe he had lost his touch.

No, wait.  There .  There was something, or so his aura had informed him—it wasn’t quite a spirit, but any lead was a worthwhile one, and it was definitely much better than having to interview random people on the street.  He took to the sky again with a small leap, coasting on lightwaves to carry him towards the location of interest.  It was back in the same place as before, in front of the woman’s store— Shigeo could still see the slight cracks in the concrete he had left behind.  There was a man standing across the street from the building, hands placed solidly on his hips with a bored expression.  And there was something else, too.

Shigeo landed silently behind the man, and observed him for a moment before speaking.

“Excuse me... what are you doing?”

The man jerked forward as if he had been struck with a heavy blow from behind, and whipped around with a surprised and alarmed look.  Now that he had turned, Shigeo was able to see the object of disturbance around the man more clearly.  It was a gray thing, the color of ash or smoke, with other deeper colors swirling inside of it.  Like a polluted river, the oily surface of the thing glistened with malignance, hinting at concealed and deadly depths.

Another wraith, Shigeo realized, with a certain disgust.  And with that realization came a snowballing effect of other realizations: the reason he hadn’t been able to detect spirits was because the source of the strange phenomena was a wraith , a similar but different manifestation that had managed to evade his notice.  One key distinction that had meant too much.

The wraith was hanging off of the man like a lover, or like a particularly large maggot wriggling out of different parts of still-living flesh.  It was watching him warily, but not without a hungry gleam in what could, by a large stretch of the imagination, be called its ‘eyes’.

“Go away,” the man told him.  His voice was strong and solid, apparently having already recovered from his earlier surprise.  “This is my territory.”

Shigeo blinked, briefly recalling the concept of ‘territories’ drawn out by the thugs of various middle school districts that had once revered him as “White T Poison”.  This man did not look like a middle schooler, though.  “Sorry... what?”

The man eyed him carefully.  Upon deciding that the scrawny middle-schooler did not in fact pose a threat, he relaxed, and shook his head with a smile.  “Huh... you’re new at this, aren’t you?”

“...at what?”  There were a lot of things he was new at — emoting, being himself — but was pretty sure that this stranger didn’t know those things about him.  And if he did, it meant Takenaka would get to meet another telepath, which maybe was a good thing.  Although, what would happen if a telepath tried to read the mind of someone with the same ability?  Would it even work?  Or would it be like when you pointed a mirror at another mirror, and the reflections just went on and on...?

“You’re just a kid,” the man sighed, looking sorrowful for a moment.  “But I guess you should get to know how things are working around here.  I’m Hiru.  You’re an esper, right?”

Shigeo nodded.

“Right.  That means you’ll need to learn to protect yourself... lots of bad people around, these days.”  The man waved him over, and cautiously, Shigeo approached.  “See that store over there?  There’s a lot of negative emotions swirling over there.  It’s really useful stuff.  Watch this.”

The wraith untangled itself from the man before lifting away like a cloud of flies from a corpse, buzzing out into the air to expand into a form two, three times the previous size, before descending upon the store in a black cloud.  The display made three times that Shigeo had witnessed a wraith in action, and he still found himself unnerved by the strange, erratic movement.  There was something familiar about the way the creature moved, though.  The answer danced on the edge of his awareness, a vague shape of recent memory.

Shigeo frowned.  “What is it doing?”

“Eating.”

“Why?”

The man looked at Shigeo like he was an idiot, which made him a little upset.  “Jeez... you really don’t know anything, do you?”

He’s not wrong.

“I’m training.  It’s really easy to get strong like this,” the psychic explained, observing the work of the wraith with a smile.  “All you have to do is drum up some basic shit— shaking walls, flashing a couple lights— you know, stuff that scares people, come back later, and then you’ve got a real quality crop of emotional energy.”  He smiled, gesturing backwards as the wraith dove into the swirl of fear.

So that was it, Shigeo realized.  He had encountered individuals who had wielded evil spirits before, but using a wraith ... there was something viscerally wrong with the act.  To fuel power with negative emotions— not only one’s own, but that of others... willingly inviting that kind of corruption into yourself was a truly desperate act.  The man seemed so enthusiastic about it, though.  Could it be that he didn’t understand the consequences of doing such a thing?

Dimple had explained it to him before.  A wraith was a manifestation of negative emotion, but the key difference that separated the concept from that of a regular evil spirit was a human’s will.  Like the manifestations of urban legends, wraiths were born from the human mind— specifically, a suffering one.  Oftentimes, the usual victims of a living wraith were dealing with trauma, or had a history of addiction, or had recently been assaulted.  The negative energy building up inside of those people, if they truly saw no way out, could manifest as a wraith.

But to deliberately manifest one, and to use it for such purposes...

Shigeo felt a spark of anger within him, and knew that it was likely to catch.

Even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing to himself, he’s still responsible for a lot of people’s suffering.  He frowned.  He must be the reason for the reports in the area.  That’s why there were no spirits earlier... I was looking for the wrong thing.

“You deliberately manifested a wraith?  But... why?”

The man lifted one thick eyebrow.  “Why?”  He chuckled.  “Because I had to, that’s why.  You’ll need to as well, if you don’t want to get caught up in trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Yeah.”  The man looked substantially weary for a moment, a dark shadow crossing his expression.  It was only then that Shigeo noted the long, tired lines beneath the man’s eyes.  “It’s dangerous to be a lone esper these days,” Hiru sighed, before waving a hand and clearing the dark expression away.  “Say, kid, why don’t you join up with me?  There’s a few of us around... I could use the extra help, and we’d be safer together.”  He smiled.  “Of course, you’d have to let me have some of your energy, too.  For me helping you out and all.”

“No,” Shigeo answered immediately.  What was with people and asking him to join their strange schemes?

“Ah.”  The man huffed disappointedly.  “Alright.  That’s fair.  But if that’s the case...” he faced Shigeo, and shrugged.  “I still gotta get my fix for the rest of the week.  Would you mind helping me out today?  That shop there... turns out, someone came along and messed with my work.”

That was probably me, Shigeo thought.  But I probably shouldn’t tell him that.

Even so, it was his expression that gave him away.  He must have looked sufficiently guilty, because it only took a moment for understanding to dawn on the man’s face.  This was another disadvantage of expressing yourself freely; it tended to give away things you didn’t want to be known.

Shigeo felt the man’s gaze turn cold on him, and knew that the tone of the situation had drastically changed:  he was being sized up.  According to Hanazawa, this was something that happened fairly often whenever psychics encountered one another.  Whenever it happened to Shigeo, though, it always seemed that he was drastically underestimated.

It’s because of how you present yourself, Hanazawa had told him once after Shigeo inquired after the reason.  It’s a clever technique... honestly, I’m not sure how you do it.  Your aura seems to resonate more with invisible frequencies.  It’s sort of like how humans can only see a certain spectrum of colors...

He hadn’t understood a single word of that explanation.  But something along those lines had to be true for any of his previous encounters — or this present one, by the looks of it — to make sense.

“You’re the one who messed with my work?”

There was no point in lying now, so Shigeo just shrugged and nodded.

The moment he did, the wraith, which had since been gleefully consuming whatever negative energy has been produced within the store earlier today, rose into the air like a black cloud of buzzing hornets.  It cast no shadow, but rose up behind the man like one, stretching out larger and larger until it was so wide that seemed like a solid, angry wall.  The way a lion would be angry if its prey was suddenly taken— and with the same look of feral hunger, too.

The man’s expression was similar.  Almost identical, in fact, but for the fact that the man’s face was human and the wraith’s was most certainly not .  Even so, seeing such a wild expression put a strange kind of fear into Shigeo’s heart.  Something was deeply wrong here.  More than it already was.

“If you’re the one who messed with my crop, then it makes sense that you should be the one to take its place, right?”  It wasn’t clear if it was the man or the wraith that spoke, with their dual expressions, but if it had been the man, then the man had a very inhuman tone.

Shigeo shifted a leg back, lowering himself the way Hanazawa had taught him to do.  Center of gravity.  Even in a psychic battle, it was important to ground yourself.  And even though he didn’t want to fight, part of him knew how unlikely it was for the situation to go any other way.

But he still tried, opening his mouth and his heart in the hope that he could reach the man with words and not violence.  “Listen,” he started, finding strength within himself to steady his tone, “I don’t know what you’ve been going through, but exploiting the feelings of others isn’t going to help you feel any better.  You should—”

It was the wrong thing to say.

⸻

It was different from fighting Hanazawa, the way he had practiced days earlier.  Very different.  The man did not dance— he lunged.  His fighting style was harshly physical, with heavy strikes and lumbering movements that Shigeo was forced to dance away from with quick, agile steps.  The wraith was quicker, attacking with whiplike strikes that came from all directions and forced him to keep moving at all times.

It was a difficult tempo to keep up with.  Avoiding the wraith was easier than dodging the man’s blows, since he could detect it more clearly with his psychic powers, but fighting both at the same time wasn’t something he had been prepared for in those training sessions.

What should I do?  As Shigeo considered this, a strike from the man landed solidly between his shoulder blades and sent him stumbling a step forward.  He managed to avoid the follow-up from the wraith, though, rolling with the momentum of the previous push before ducking backwards once more.

Even though it’s hard, I’m getting better at this, he realized, and while whether or not getting better at fighting was a good thing, Shigeo still felt proud.  Months of training with the Body Improvement Club had made his stamina better, and after working with Teru, it was possible for him to anticipate attacks instead of hiding behind a barrier.

There was a problem, though.  It had taken him a while to realize, since most of his attention was taken up by maintaining awareness of man and wraith simultaneously, but it had also been that very effort that clued him into the thing that had kept bothering him, even before the fight.

The man and the wraith were nearly one.  It wasn’t a possession, or even some sort of symbiotic relationship the two had managed to work out.  It wasn’t a curse, either.  It wasn’t anything that Shigeo had ever seen before.

There were many different types of spirits.  But even so, a wraith was an awful thing, an awful thing that fed on negativity and relished in the suffering of others.  To willingly create one — and not only that, but then to accept it completely into one’s own heart for any reason — it was unthinkable.

And it meant that Shigeo couldn’t exorcise it.  Not without seriously injuring — or even possibly killing — the man who had created the thing.

When it came to the wraith, Shigeo’s second sight could tell him everything about it.  How it cut off parts of itself to create minor spirits to cause trouble so that the larger form could come along later and harvest the negative energy.  How it could absorb smaller spirits to gain strength.  How it was well and truly evil.

But he couldn’t understand anything about the person who had made it.  There was no power that could help him with that.  Was it always that way?  Could people really never understand the reasons others did these things?  Was the world always intent on clashing with what he wanted?

He hadn’t wanted it to come to a fight, but it had.  He hadn’t wanted this to happen, but it did.

Shigeo grimaced, and forced the wraith back with a wide barrier.  Why couldn’t this guy have just listened to him?

Serizawa didn’t listen, either, back when Shigeo had wanted to eliminate the wraith in the restaurant.  But now... Serizawa wasn’t here, was he?  This time, he could do the right thing— the thing that needed to be done.

It was hard to think clearly.  He was so angry, at this man for hurting people, and at himself for having done worse, and at the world that had allowed either of them to live long enough to do so.  It was all of these furies that whipped at the air, the buildings, the sky around them now, lashing out without direction, conflicting with his inner heart pleading with himself to just stop , before he hurt someone too—

But he couldn’t.  The force of his anger was greater than his own will, and through the red curtain of his rage-induced tunnel vision, the world seemed a very distant thing.

I don’t want to hurt anyone.

But what if I have to?

If I could just get rid of the wraith...

If I could just get rid of him...

If I could just make it stop...

It wasn’t so much a thought that came to him as much as it was an instinct, the same kind that drove him to try the strange absorption technique he had almost attempted on Hanazawa, and the action was much the same.  In a simple move, Shigeo released the barrier holding the wraith back, knowing it would come rushing at him again in all its oleaginous being.

He met it head on, propelling himself up from the ground and through the space between him and the creature’s dark form— a move that surprised it, evidently, as both the man and the thing froze for a moment, both utterly confused by what appeared to be an entirely suicidal act.  It was long enough for him to get a hold on the thing— but not long enough to make sure that it didn’t get a hold on him .

Or maybe it already had.  Maybe it had from the very beginning of the fight.  Negative emotions had a strange, contagious property within them, and it was very, very easy to allow those kinds of feelings in.

But Shigeo was on his own today, so it was fine.

Still, when a dark hand emerged from the wraith and grabbed him, he felt fear.  The sensation of being enveloped by the thing was like sinking into mud, and fear made him want to struggle, pull himself free, but he hadn’t managed to do what he needed to do yet.

The man and the wraith had joined together.  Tearing them from one another would be a violent solution likely to result in death on both sides.  But they were still (albeit barely) separate entities, and it was that slight distinction that allowed Shigeo to make his move.  It would just be like taking a tumor off and cauterizing the wound, or so he hoped.

He didn’t even have to try.  The moment the wraith’s viscous form finally engulfed his head, his power stirred of its own accord, as if completely understanding what Shigeo meant for it to do.  He could feel the movement of that tidal psychic force within him, stretching through the nonphysical material making up the enveloping wraith, settling into the very bonds that held the manifestation of evil together, the bonds that linked it to the man and everything else in the living plane.  The plane where it did not belong, even invited.

It wasn’t a comfortable process.  Shigeo felt his range of vision with his second sight narrow substantially as his power and his own self both warped to swallow the energy, and a tremendous pain started up in his head, as if that, too, was stretching under the force of his power.  It was a feeling not dissimilar from the time he had been forced to endure the massive gravitational power of the old division leader, but since it came from within himself, it was well and truly inescapable.  But just as it seemed like his own body, and not that of the wraith, might break apart, Shigeo felt his lungs fill with air again, and when he opened his eyes, there was no wraith.

He lay on the concrete for a moment, his chest rising and falling with heaving gasps (he hadn’t realized the impossibility of breathing while enveloped by the spirit, but looking back on it, it made sense) and threw his arms up above him, just in case the man was likely to come and attack again.

No attack came.  Shigeo glanced in the direction he had last seen the man, and saw him in a similarly sprawled position.  And breathing.

The esper used his next gasp of air to breathe a sigh of relief, and the one following that to get himself standing and walking over to the man.

“Hey.”  His own wheezy voice didn’t sound too authoritative, but Shigeo had a hunch that the man was probably more inclined to listen to him after having his main power source ripped away.  “You said... that there were other people doing this.  Like you were.  I need you to tell me who they are.”

At first, when a reply did not come rapidly, he was uncertain of the man’s state of consciousness, but as the man’s eyes opened and beheld Shigeo’s shadowed form with shock and terror, it seemed relatively clear.

A strange sensation that was not shame stirred in Shigeo's heart.

“Oh, and also—” Shigeo Kageyama added, offering the man what was perhaps a less-than-friendly smile, “—I think this goes without saying, but you really have to stop doing this kind of thing."