Chapter Text
It’s raining on the day that the employees of Spirits and Such arrive on the scene.
Typically, Reigen wouldn’t mind the weather. He learned his lesson early on in the business to keep a spare umbrella at the office in case of days like these, and even then he hardly needed it thanks to the help of his psychic employees. Needing to take a job out in the December cold on top of the rainy weather, though, is both a pet peeve and an oversight on Reigen’s part.
He braces himself against the damp breeze that kicks up along the street. The wind catches under the fabric of the umbrella in his hand, and he curses silently to himself as he readjusts his grip on the handle.
Tome shuffles up to keep pace next to Reigen. Even from under her scarf, her scowl is clearly written across her face.
"God, it's freezing," she grumbles. "Couldn't we have picked any other day to do this?"
I wish, is what Reigen wants to say, but he knows complaining will get them nowhere. Customer always comes first, right? He’d hate to lose a possible paycheck over something as trivial as bad weather. That’s not how he runs things around here, and Tome knows it.
If it weren't for the bitter cold that awaits any opportunity to nip at his skin, Reigen would've waved his free hand around for emphasis. Instead, he keeps it in his pocket and simply shakes his head.
"The client's already rescheduled once, Tome," he replies. "We can't bail on them just 'cause of a little rain."
"I was asking for someone to complain with, not a business lesson."
He shrugs. "What? It's bad practice to keep a client waiting."
Typical Tome. From the moment she started showing up to the office, Reigen knew she’d be a handful. She’s never been afraid to speak her mind, even if it meant openly complaining about the circumstances of the job. To say the two of them have butt heads over it would be an understatement. In the six months that she’s been working here, though, it’s been her lack of a filter that has gotten himself and Serizawa out of trouble time and again. Maybe “complaining” sounds more like calling things as she sees it. Either way, there’s a reason Reigen’s allowed her to stick around – even if he himself doesn’t acknowledge that.
As he turns the corner at the end of the block, Reigen notices the sudden pause in the falling rain. He casts a glance to his side to see Mob and Serizawa keeping close behind them, a shimmering bubble of suspended droplets surrounding the chunk of sidewalk they occupy.
"Speaking of the client," Mob pipes up, "you haven't told us what we're doing out here yet, Master."
And there's his cue. Reigen clears his throat, puffing up his chest to stir up the theatrics that so clearly define his role in the company.
"Well," he begins, "it's actually a few clients, so to speak. A couple of families in this neighborhood have been complaining about sleepless nights for the past couple weeks. Bad dreams, sleepwalking, the whole shebang."
Serizawa perks up, and Reigen sees him fish the small notebook he always carries out of his pocket. The client had actually spoken to both of them a few days before; Serizawa, observant as ever, practically wrote down every word. It's times like these Reigen is grateful that at least one of them has a habit of keeping tabs on things.
"A younger man from one of the apartment complexes finally came to us for help earlier this week," he continues, picking up almost seamlessly where Reigen left off. "He says that he saw a malicious spirit in one of the old office buildings at the edge of the neighborhood. Figures if we could get rid of it for him, the sleeping complaints in the area will stop."
Serizawa pauses a moment to skim over his notes, then promptly closes the book again. "Local rumors say it's a pretty powerful one, so just be ready for anything."
"Guess it's a good thing we've got the whole gang today, huh?" Reigen wonders aloud, reaching out his free hand to pat Mob on the shoulder. He quickly retracts it back into his pocket, fingers already stinging from the breeze.
Truth be told, Reigen isn't quite used to bringing this many people along to a job anymore. The biggest clients tend to come in during typical school hours, so most of the time, it's just him and Serizawa. Tome jumps at every opportunity she can to tag along, of course, but even then, the biggest crowd is usually just the three of them. He’s grown to allow himself not to mind it. Growth is great for a company – expected, even. Employees will come and go, that’s just how it all works. But Mob…
Mob has been busy. That's usually how it goes for third-years. Between cram school and general life obligations, it's no surprise he hasn't been coming around to the office as much anymore. Reigen isn't going to hold it over his head, obviously, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss having the kid around as often as he used to.
Not that he'd ever tell him that, of course.
As they approach their destination, Reigen flicks open his phone to double-check the address. Everything lines up, from the numbers on the building to the boarded-up windows the client had warned about.
"Seems to be the place," he says, snapping his phone shut. He turns to look over his shoulder, nodding in the direction of the door. "Let's get out of the cold already, yeah?"
The office building is about as dilapidated as it gets. The interior of the complex appears gutted, with long-abandoned furniture and debris littered haphazardly along the walls. The windows that aren't boarded up are otherwise broken, offering no sanctuary from the cold and wet of the outside world. Typical setting for jobs of this nature. Reigen closes his umbrella and shakes off the excess water, leaning it against the wall next to the door.
"Alright, the client said this was the last place he saw the spirit," he says, gesturing out at the dilapidated room before him. "You know what to do, team."
Tome and Mob have already taken the initiative, wandering to the far side of the room and out into one of the first floor's many hallways. Serizawa lingers, his gaze wandering about the broken-down furniture strewn across the floor. Shoving his hands back into his pockets, Reigen lets himself drift about the complex.
He eventually finds himself in what used to be an office suite. Without any psychic powers, it's obviously hard to tell if a spirit is even present, let alone where it might be residing, but he figures it's better to at least try to make himself useful during the search. He meanders through the room, careful not to disturb the remains of the file cabinets rusted shut along the wall. Out in the hallway, he catches the indistinct conversation between Mob and Tome.
"...sense anything?" Tome finishes saying, her voice carrying through the empty halls over her approaching footsteps.
"No, not yet," Mob replies, as simple as ever. There's a pause, then, "Oh, hang on. I think I got something."
To this, Reigen perks up. He turns on his heel and begins to make his way for the door, but something stops him. Something cold. A light pressure, settling itself on his shoulder from somewhere behind him. A shiver runs down his spine. And then--
"Hey."
Reigen hates that his first reaction is to scream, but he does so anyway. It's more like a yelp that gets caught in his throat, his hands flying out of his pockets to swat at whatever malicious entity had snuck up behind him. His feet rocket him straight out the door, stumbling on the uneven molding as he wheels around to meet the eyes of his aggressor. It's not until after the first seconds of his reaction that he notices Tome and Mob out of the corner of his eye, trading looks and restrained laughter between one another.
"Master, it's fine," Mob points at the glowing green aura in the doorway Reigen just shot out of. "It was only Dimple."
Dimple, meanwhile, has finally decided to show himself, a shit-eating grin plastered across his lips. "Man, you shoulda seen the look on your face," he laughs. "That was priceless!"
"Ahem–" Reigen loudly clears his throat, a probably futile attempt to play it off. He straightens his suit jacket, eyes narrowed. "My face is perfectly fine, thanks. I think we should be more worried about where yours has been. What took you so long?"
"Eh, saw the address on your desk, decided to check it out. You should be thanking me, honestly. I’ve been doing all the heavy lifting here." – To this, Reigen only scowls. Dimple lets out a huff and rolls his eyes. – "In any case, I think I found the spirit you guys were looking for. Come on."
Tome, as usual, is the first in line. The others eventually fall in behind her, following the trailing green aura that dimly lights the way through the complex. Dimple leads the way through the winding hallways, down a few sets of stairs, and into what Reigen assumes is the building's basement level. Immediately, something is off.
There's almost a shift in the air pressure as they make their way down the steps. Reigen's eyes drift along the walls, picking up on the noticeable twinge of red that has slowly begun to seep in through the cracks of the building's ancient concrete foundation. Somehow, it's even colder down here than it is outside. Reigen tries to hide the shiver that crawls down his spine.
At the bottom of the steps, Tome freezes, leaning away from the floating form of Dimple just inches ahead of her. She turns up to the others.
"Through the door," she whispers, eyes wide in anticipation. "I think I see something."
Mob and Serizawa take this as their cue. Reigen steps aside to let them pass ahead of him, and he quickly follows suit behind them. Instinctively, his arm reaches out to bar Tome behind him; the girl has a bad habit of diving headfirst into things. This is the part of the job when the ones without a means to defend themselves from the supernatural keep clear of the ones who do.
Dimple floats ahead to join the espers at their side, the green glow of his aura swimming through the red light painting the basement like headlights through a fog. The dim beacon of Dimple's form just barely illuminates the silhouette of...something...at the back of the room. It's a hulking figure, back presumably turned, shrouded in the ever-shifting tendrils of what Reigen can only describe as living shadow. Its back bristles, the top of its form nearly brushing against the ceiling.
Through the reddish darkness, Mob and Serizawa exchange a glance. And then, they get to work.
The spirit suddenly thrashes under the flashing lights of psychic auras dancing around its silhouette. The red hue painting the basement flickers under the intensity of Mob and Serizawa’s attacks, and Reigen raises his arms to shield his eyes from the light show. A hollow shriek grates at the ears of every human in the room. With every slash, every ball of light lobbed into the air, the spirit shrinks a bit more in size. Reigen smiles. They should be out of this in time for lunch.
At least, that’s what he thought.
The trunk-like appendage on the spirit’s face flails. Serizawa rolls out of the way, a shimmering trail of business cards flitting after him. The hazy red appendage ricochets off the esper’s barrier and slams into the wall next to it. The basement and all its contents shudder, and one of the bookshelves along the wall tips forward. Tome yelps in surprise and tries to duck out of the way.
Damn all this clutter. Reigen watches as her leg catches on a stray box and she falls, and with hardly a beat missed he’s throwing his hands out to pull her away from the toppling debris. The bookshelf slams onto the ground mere inches away from Tome’s foot. Reigen adjusts his grip on her arm and helps her up.
“You alright?” Reigen asks, but the bug-eyed look on Tome’s face and her frantic nodding tell him all he needs to know.
He pats her shoulders and kicks the boxes aside, a flash of projected confidence returning to his face. Its sincerity remains debatable, but it’s better to fake it and keep her calm than exacerbate the situation.
Ahead of them, the explosive chaos of the fight continues to rage on. A flash of a barrier cracks through the reddish hues of the room like lightning. There’s shouting, then crashing, then more shouting. Reigen can’t hear Mob and Serizawa’s conversation over the spirit’s cacophony of groans and shrieks. A flash of green darts in and out of the spirit’s swinging, shadow-like appendages, then suddenly comes to a halt in front of the apparition. Reigen frowns. Dimple’s looking this way, waving his arms and calling something out to the two non-espers on the other side of the room.
Reigen realizes far too late that he didn’t see it coming.
First, he hears Serizawa shouting “Look out!” Or at least, something along those lines, as his voice is cut off by a stray appendage knocking him out of the way. Then, he sees the almost-eradicated form of the spirit lunge forward. There’s a flash of purple and blue. Mob, probably. But whatever he was trying to do doesn’t register in time.
And then Reigen feels all the air escape from his lungs.
The spirit crashes directly into him. The stringy haze of a maw opens and swallows him whole. Spectral jaws clamp onto mortal flesh. Reigen’s vision explodes. A flash of red light obscures everything else around him, and all at once, the cacophony of whispers and groaning and screaming that was swirling inside this spirit cascades into his mind. He feels his body lift off the ground and slam into something hard. Probably got knocked back from the impact. God, his head is pounding. His whole body feels like it could split in half.
He squeezes his eyes shut. The red doesn’t go away. Nor does the headache, or the noise, or anything else in this sensory overload he’s been swept into. Then, there’s a flash of purple. Two different shades, two different espers. The red flickers. The shrieking agitates.
Something in front of him forms, but just barely, like a shadow creeping just beyond his peripheral vision. It’s smaller than the spirit that swallowed him. More human-like. Its attention is caught by the conflicting flashes of color in Reigen’s vision. He watches it look up at some unseen sky, back turned to him. Its form blurs, then slowly, it turns its head back toward him.
The figure has no face. Tendrils of shadow not unlike the spirit’s coagulate where its features should be, save for the two piercing eyes staring right through him. Reigen feels his heart drop into his stomach.
His knees give out. Reigen falls over. The red cuts to black.
Serizawa isn’t quite sure what happened.
The entire job so far, to him, seems to have been going normally. The crew arrives on the scene, they locate the spirit and exorcize it before it can cause any more havoc. Typical day on the job. He feels like by now, he should know what to expect from days like these.
But when the spirit unexpectedly wriggles itself free of his grip and shoots across the room like a bullet, Serizawa isn’t able to react in time.
One second, he’s blocking an attack from a stray appendage. The next, he’s looking up to see what remains of the spirit latching onto Reigen’s face. Mob throws his hand out to wrestle the spirit back under control, locking both Reigen and the spirit’s writhing form in place.
Serizawa wastes no time. He darts across the room, sheathing his business cards with one hand and throwing the other out to the spirit. His hand wraps around the side of Reigen’s head, careful not to crash too hard into him as he shoves past the shadowy tendrils lashing above the both of them. Purple light flares between his fingers and mingles with the red-purple-blue swirling between him and the spirit. The spirit wails, the basement shudders, the appendages thrash against the psychic energy tearing it apart from the inside out–
And then there’s silence.
The last of the spirit’s form folds in on itself and dissolves into nothing. Mob and Serizawa both relent their power, and the reds and purples and blues that painted the basement walls fade back into its normal, monotonous gray. The last remnants of spiritual energy drift off of Reigen’s face and shoulders like dissipating smoke, and his body goes limp. Startled, Serizawa clumsily shifts his grip and catches him, gently guiding him to the floor.
“Is it– Is it over?” Tome calls from behind him. The sudden thudding and rustling of boxes cut through the silence. Serizawa hears her curse under her breath.
He pauses a moment to assess the damage. The smoke-like residue of what used to be the spirit has disappeared almost completely. Above where Serizawa is kneeling, Dimple buoys about the ceiling to snatch up the stragglers. He can't sense any other spiritual presence besides him...in terms of the job they came here to do, the answer to Tome's question seems to be all but a "yes."
"I think so, but..." Serizawa responds, but his voice trails off.
"'What's wrong?"
Reigen. Reigen is what's wrong. He's currently lying limp on the floor, held up by his shoulders under Serizawa's arm. He hasn't moved since the spirit was exorcized. Serizawa holds his breath. There's a slight rise and fall to Reigen's chest, and though his eyes are closed, Serizawa can still see them fluttering under his eyelids.
He turns to look up at Tome. By now, Mob has joined her at her side. "It's Reigen," he says. "I think the spirit did something to him."
Mob's eyes widen. "Is he hurt?"
"No," – Serizawa pauses to glance him over – "Er, not that I can see. But that spirit had a pretty rough grip on him. He's alive, but he's out cold."
"He'll wake up, though, right?"
"Eh, that depends," Dimple interjects. He shakes his hands free of the spiritual residue still lingering in the air and floats down towards Reigen and Serizawa. "I’m pretty sure that spirit was trying to possess him just now."
"What?!" Tome cries, "What do you mean, 'pretty sure'?!"
"Will you calm down? Everything was happening so fast, I could barely keep up with the thing." Dimple turns his side-eye away from Tome and leans in to get a closer look. The look of annoyance that had flashed across his face slowly melts into one of concern.
Mob is the first to notice it. "...Dimple. What happened?"
Dimple shakes his head, the kind of disappointed gesture one gives when their worst expectations come to pass. "You guys said this client was dealing with nightmares a lot lately, right?"
"Yes, what about it?"
"Well..." he gestures to Reigen, "I think our client's bad dreams just got passed to somebody else."
"So, is he possessed, or not?" Mob, now, has joined the others in the kneeling huddle around a sleeping Reigen. Tome follows close behind him.
"Nah, not entirely," Dimple crosses his arms, "but I do think a little piece of that spirit might've gotten through to his head. It's…I dunno, hiding in there, more than anything else."
Tome raises an eyebrow. "The hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means we might be dealing with a dream-eater spirit. I've only seen 'em once or twice before, but I know how these guys work. Sneaky bastards will try to get into your head and take on a host from the inside out. Makes the victims fall into a deep sleep, or something like that."
"But we got rid of the spirit already, didn't we?" Mob interjects. He poses it as a question, though his intonation makes it feel more like a statement.
"Out here? Sure. But the second that thing latched onto Reigen's head, it was already wriggling its way inside. That thing's probably stuck to his conscience like a leech by now."
Apprehensive silence presses down over the basement. It's been at least a few minutes since the spirit had been exorcized (at least in the waking world, according to Dimple's guess), and still, Reigen sleeps. There's a brief, dreadful moment where Serizawa considers the worst. If what Dimple says is true, then it's possible that they might be too late...
Mob rises to his feet. "We'll exorcize it, then."
Tome frowns. "How? We can't just fish a spirit out of somebody's head like that, can we?"
There's a slight hesitation in the exchange that Serizawa can't help but pick up on. Mob rolls his shoulders, eyes trained on Reigen.
"I've dealt with similar stuff in the past," he replies simply. "Another job Master and I took on a couple of years ago. This shouldn't be any different."
"Mmm, we might be pushing it on the 'similar' bit," Dimple hums. "There's a big difference between dream-eaters and possessions. We gotta approach this carefully." A pause. Serizawa watches as he and Mob exchange a hesitant, knowing look. "...Probably for the best if we do this as a team this time, yeah?"
Serizawa has never been the best at reading the expressions on Mob's face. At least, not to the extent someone like Reigen can. But he knows an anxious demeanor when he sees one, and the lack of response from Mob tells him all he needs to know. Carefully, he shifts his grip on Reigen and turns to the boy standing before him.
"Dimple's got a point, Shigeo," he says, returning to the softness in his voice that had been absent in the stress of the moment. He purses his lips, trying to consider their options. "...I don't think Reigen's in any pain right now. At the very least, we might have some time to figure out what we're dealing with before we jump into things. You don't have to deal with this by yourself if you don't want to."
Mob's shoulders relax ever so slightly. The change is minute, but Serizawa can tell that his words at least bring a little comfort, even if the air of concern still hangs heavy around him. Mob hesitates, then eventually brings himself to look away from Reigen and back to Serizawa. There's a glimmer in his eye that Serizawa can just make out. Gratitude, or so he surmises.
It's also to this sentiment that Tome returns to her usual, fiery self. She slams her fist down into her palm, a scheming and determined smile creeping over her face. "Hey, yeah! Maybe you and I can hit the books, Mob, see what we can find about dream-takers or whatever they're called."
"Dream-eaters," Dimple corrects. "And come to think of it, that might be a good call. The more prepared we are to handle this, the better."
Mob takes a moment to ponder this. "...Alright," he eventually mutters. He doesn't turn his gaze away from Serizawa. "Alright. That could work."
Tome rocks back on her heels and brings herself back to her feet. She dusts off her hands and looks out at the others. "It's settled, then! We'll meet back up later with everything we found.”
With that, Serizawa hooks his other arm under Reigen's legs and hoists him up. He follows the kids and Dimple up the steps, out of the basement, back into the rain, and walks with them until one intersection leads them each to different roads. He exchanges goodbyes with Tome, gives an acknowledging nod to Dimple. Mob lingers behind for a moment, looking expectantly at his fellow esper. Serizawa can feel the uncertainty hanging in the air between them.
"I'll keep an eye on him," he reassures him. "We'll figure out a way to get him back. Together."
For the first time since the exorcism job began, Serizawa sees Mob's eyes soften. A smile – small and timid and understanding – tugs at the corner of his lips.
"Thank you, Serizawa," he says, and he turns on his heel to catch up with Dimple.
Serizawa, meanwhile, turns to go his own way, safe under the shimmering bubble of suspended rain. His eyes trail down to the sleeping man in his arms. Truth be told, even he isn't entirely convinced of his own words. He doesn't know – there's no way he could know – if things would actually turn out to be alright.
But they have to. They have to, because right now, Reigen needs their help. And what kind of employees would they be if they couldn't carry that burden?
Reigen sleeps. Serizawa carries on.